Sunday, 7/8: At about 9 pm the train arrived in Guilin. We were met by Zoe, our contact at the school, and Hai'er (whose name is the same as that of a common appliance brand in China, similar to Kitchenaid). They are both English teachers at the school, which is the Middle School attached to Guangxi Normal University. Zoe took us in a cab back to our apartment. It is in a set of apartments for teachers right next to the middle school. It is very nice. There was a watermelon and cold water waiting for us in the refrigerator, along with an enormous bunch of bananas (the short, very sweet Guilin kind) and a vase of sunflowers. Charlie and Forrest are sharing a room, which has air conditioning. I get my own bedroom, but it only has a standing fan. It is very hot and humid in Guilin! We also have a kitchen, a bathroom with a laundry machine, and a room with a computer with Internet access.
The style of our bathroom is very typical in China. There is a drain in the floor, and then the showerhead is just stuck on the wall and water gets all over the floor whenever you shower. When you finish you can use a broom to push the water into the drain. Also, the tube from the laundry machine doesn't quite make it to the drain, so every time we do laundry it floods the bathroom floor. It's a little bit of a surprise to be sitting on the toilet and suddenly have water washing around your ankles. The only atypical thing about the bathroom is that the toilet is Western-style. Most toilets in China are squatters. I like squatters better at this point because they seem cleaner, but if you have indigestion/diarrhea (la duzi) then it is nice to be able to sit down.
Monday, 7/9: There is a big lake right next to the school, so this morning we spent an hour or so walking along it. Guilin is like living inside a fancy walled-in rich-people community, or Disney World. There are pretty, ornamental bridges all over the place (my favorite is a steeply arched, M-shaped, wooden one whose planks bend and creak as you walk over it) and so many trees and bushes and flowers that you feel like you are in the countryside rather than in a city, and there are randomly people sitting around on the pebble paths by the water playing traditional Chinese instruments. The Guilin scenery is stunning, because the city is dotted with these greenery-coated miniature mountains that look like they spontaneously shot straight up out of the earth. They continue off into the distance, so that the horizon is a continuous, jagged line of hazy blue mountains.
The school gave us a banquet for lunch at a nice hotel across the lake. So much food! One of the dishes they served was mifen, rice noodles, which is a specialty of Guilin. Three English teachers were there (one of whom had the same name as a Chinese kung fu movie star and who told me that he wanted to find an English-speaking wife so that he could practice his English with her), and a school administrator named Sue who is in charge of our class. There were also students there, whom we were told are the school's best students. Only one of them (Gissing) is going to be in our class, though. Two of them wanted new English names, so we named one Rose. The other went through a whole list of names we gave her before she settled on Alexis. They had Charlie, Forrest, and I stand up and each introduce ourselves in Chinese, which made the students giggle a little bit. After lunch, they gave us a doggie bag full of baked potatoes and purple sweet potatoes (which are now also my favorite ice cream flavor - it is creamy and purple and tastes like a buttery hazelnut).
After lunch, the students took us around Guilin. Charlie wanted to buy new sandals, so they took us to a super-expensive shopping mall (which didn't have what he wanted anyways) and a Nike store and a cheap mall in the underground passageways for crossing the big streets. Charlie didn't like it because he said it felt like babysitting, and you could tell they were eager to go home because in the middle of the day in Guilin it is very hot and muggy and most people stay home in the air conditioning and rest. Schools generally have a break from 11:30 to 2:30 so that their students can go home to eat lunch and take a nap through the hottest part of the day. I attempted to buy the students ice cream (there were 6 or 7 of them with us) but they wouldn't let me, so then Charlie just bought it for them anyways. I need to learn to be pushy like that because that is courtesy here, where people never own up to what they want. As a blunt American, if someone offers me something and I want it, I say "sure!" But then the ice cream turned out to have melted and re-frozen, so it was icy and the cones were soggy. Oh, well. In the evening Forrest and Charlie went to play soccer with Hai'er, but I just lay in the apartment in the blessed air conditioning.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
End of Xi'an
Thursday, 7/5: Can't remember what happened on Thursday. My bridge is going to be a swinging bridge.
Friday, 7/6: Today was the last day of classes at Xi'an Gaoxin No. 1 High School. We tested out the bridges (mine came in last, falling under the weight of three smallish books). The best held 25 books (including some heavy English-Chinese dictionaries), a ream of paper, and a student's workbook, and still didn't fall. At that point we'd run out of things to stack on it. We didn't have time to do step dancing. What a shame! At the end we took pictures with our class, including jumping pictures - we'll see how those turn out. We gave Wendy and Jane their presents, which were each two apples and two oranges (both are really expensive in China).
Then we went to lunch with the principal. We were expecting to just sit down with her alone in the cafeteria for twenty minutes, but while we were waiting for her this bus full of middle-aged white people pulled up at the school. They were principals and administrators from American school systems, come to China on a teaching exchange program. Turned out the lunch was a full-out banquet with these visitors and the school's principal and vice principal and Jane. One of the people at our table was the Jerry Weast of Baltimore County (the director of the school board? what's the word?). He mentioned that he was good friends with Weast. The food was really fancy. There were little pastries shaped like birdies filled with red bean paste, and clam shells with some sort of seafood dish served inside them, and veggie spring roll-ish things, and all sorts of meats, and little appetizers, and fried rice brought out for the vegetarians (with little pieces of ham in it), and some sort of sweet fried stick filled with condensed milk. the lunch lasted a really long time, and then everyone presented gifts at the end. we'd already given Jane our gift, and all we had for the principal and vice principal were MIT key chains, so we held back while everyone else presented T-shirts, hats, etc, and just slipped them the keychains at the end.
Then we went to the train station to find a bus to Hua Shan. Once we got on the bus around 3 pm, we sat in the heat for an hour and a half waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers. once they had fit in as many passengers as they possibly could, we left and arrived at Hua Shan two and a half hours later at 7 pm. We ate dinner and then paid 45Y for a room with three beds where we took a nap until 11 pm hours before starting up the moutain. Every single building in the town had a convenience store or a restaurant and dubious rooms in the back that they tried to get us to stay in by coming up to us and gesturing with their hands to show "sleep." We also each bought a small LED flashlight.
At 11 pm, we started up the mountain. For a little while, it was a sloping paved stone path, but after about 45 minutes it turned into stone steps going up the mountain. For the next three or four hours it took to get to the East Peak, it was steps. Steep steps, shallow steps, wide steps, and incredibly narrow steps where you had to put your foot sideways onto the step, hang onto the chain along the side of the stairs, and not look down. There were also a couple of stone ladders. Hua Shan, which is considered one of the five most important mountains in China, has five peaks - four named for the four cardinal directions, and Central Peak. The first one you reach on the way up is North Peak, the lowest, which also has a gondola going to it. From there we went to Central Peak then East Peak, arriving at East Peak sometime before 4:30 am. From the very beginning, I had a cramp in my right leg, which briefly went away when I got warmed up, then came back worse. I realized I'm really out of shape. I started breathing so hard on my way up the steps that I felt like the air was ripping through my throat. We were lucky to be doing it at night because it was cool and comfortable, rather than boiling hot and sunny. It was gorgeous looking out over the glittering lights of the path below and the town below that, and the shadowy, white faces of the surrounding mountain peaks. It was also exciting to sometimes be going up a staircase, and then realize that on either side of the chain railing there was a 200 m drop off.
Saturday, 7/7: Once we stopped at the top of East Peak, I was sweat soaked and the mountain breeze made me freezing cold. But an hour later the sun rose, and that was beautiful. When we tried to go down the mountain, my legs turned to jelly and it took forever to get back to North Peak, so from there we took the gondola down instead of walking back down all those stairs, which would've left me with a decent probability of my legs giving out and me falling off the mountain. When we reached the bottom we ate breakfast and caught a bus back to Xi'an.
We had naps and packed (goodbye, my beautiful room) and then Alice picked us up to take us to the train station. She gave us each a bracelet as a present, and we gave her one of the two bottles of Burberry perfume that I brought (or eau de toilette or fragrance or whatever).
This was the first time we'd taken the train without Christopher. The four of us had played spades a lot. Turns out three-person card games aren't nearly so interesting - we played a whole lot of Big 2 (a variation on Scum, or President).
Friday, 7/6: Today was the last day of classes at Xi'an Gaoxin No. 1 High School. We tested out the bridges (mine came in last, falling under the weight of three smallish books). The best held 25 books (including some heavy English-Chinese dictionaries), a ream of paper, and a student's workbook, and still didn't fall. At that point we'd run out of things to stack on it. We didn't have time to do step dancing. What a shame! At the end we took pictures with our class, including jumping pictures - we'll see how those turn out. We gave Wendy and Jane their presents, which were each two apples and two oranges (both are really expensive in China).
Then we went to lunch with the principal. We were expecting to just sit down with her alone in the cafeteria for twenty minutes, but while we were waiting for her this bus full of middle-aged white people pulled up at the school. They were principals and administrators from American school systems, come to China on a teaching exchange program. Turned out the lunch was a full-out banquet with these visitors and the school's principal and vice principal and Jane. One of the people at our table was the Jerry Weast of Baltimore County (the director of the school board? what's the word?). He mentioned that he was good friends with Weast. The food was really fancy. There were little pastries shaped like birdies filled with red bean paste, and clam shells with some sort of seafood dish served inside them, and veggie spring roll-ish things, and all sorts of meats, and little appetizers, and fried rice brought out for the vegetarians (with little pieces of ham in it), and some sort of sweet fried stick filled with condensed milk. the lunch lasted a really long time, and then everyone presented gifts at the end. we'd already given Jane our gift, and all we had for the principal and vice principal were MIT key chains, so we held back while everyone else presented T-shirts, hats, etc, and just slipped them the keychains at the end.
Then we went to the train station to find a bus to Hua Shan. Once we got on the bus around 3 pm, we sat in the heat for an hour and a half waiting for the bus to fill up with passengers. once they had fit in as many passengers as they possibly could, we left and arrived at Hua Shan two and a half hours later at 7 pm. We ate dinner and then paid 45Y for a room with three beds where we took a nap until 11 pm hours before starting up the moutain. Every single building in the town had a convenience store or a restaurant and dubious rooms in the back that they tried to get us to stay in by coming up to us and gesturing with their hands to show "sleep." We also each bought a small LED flashlight.
At 11 pm, we started up the mountain. For a little while, it was a sloping paved stone path, but after about 45 minutes it turned into stone steps going up the mountain. For the next three or four hours it took to get to the East Peak, it was steps. Steep steps, shallow steps, wide steps, and incredibly narrow steps where you had to put your foot sideways onto the step, hang onto the chain along the side of the stairs, and not look down. There were also a couple of stone ladders. Hua Shan, which is considered one of the five most important mountains in China, has five peaks - four named for the four cardinal directions, and Central Peak. The first one you reach on the way up is North Peak, the lowest, which also has a gondola going to it. From there we went to Central Peak then East Peak, arriving at East Peak sometime before 4:30 am. From the very beginning, I had a cramp in my right leg, which briefly went away when I got warmed up, then came back worse. I realized I'm really out of shape. I started breathing so hard on my way up the steps that I felt like the air was ripping through my throat. We were lucky to be doing it at night because it was cool and comfortable, rather than boiling hot and sunny. It was gorgeous looking out over the glittering lights of the path below and the town below that, and the shadowy, white faces of the surrounding mountain peaks. It was also exciting to sometimes be going up a staircase, and then realize that on either side of the chain railing there was a 200 m drop off.
Saturday, 7/7: Once we stopped at the top of East Peak, I was sweat soaked and the mountain breeze made me freezing cold. But an hour later the sun rose, and that was beautiful. When we tried to go down the mountain, my legs turned to jelly and it took forever to get back to North Peak, so from there we took the gondola down instead of walking back down all those stairs, which would've left me with a decent probability of my legs giving out and me falling off the mountain. When we reached the bottom we ate breakfast and caught a bus back to Xi'an.
We had naps and packed (goodbye, my beautiful room) and then Alice picked us up to take us to the train station. She gave us each a bracelet as a present, and we gave her one of the two bottles of Burberry perfume that I brought (or eau de toilette or fragrance or whatever).
This was the first time we'd taken the train without Christopher. The four of us had played spades a lot. Turns out three-person card games aren't nearly so interesting - we played a whole lot of Big 2 (a variation on Scum, or President).
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Teaching in Xi'an
Oh my, I haven't posted in a long time. I wrote an entry and then never posted it, and now I've added some more.
Sunday, 6/24: Charlie was sick. Alice took Forrest and I to the Shaanxi Province History Museum and the Wild Goose Pagoda. At the museum, there was a golden horse-dragon-scorpion monster that was cool-looking. Everything in the gift shops was ridiculously expensive (hundreds to tens of thousands of yuan) - there weren't key chains or anything for the poor students who visit. We didn't stay long at the pagoda since it was blazing hot and it was mostly outdoor gardens. The pagoda was a seven layer tower. We watched "V for Vendetta" on HBO that evening. I was afraid I wouldn't like it because I don't like violent movies, but I did like it. It was pretty good. V reminded me of Sheila.
Monday, 6/25: We went to a two-thousand-year-old emperor's tomb with the Californian exchange students. The set-up of the museum was really nice - the whole museum is underground, and they have the excavated pits enclosed in thermal glass, that people can walk on top of, so that they can control the temperature and lighting and humidity inside the pits to preserve the relics, unlike at the terracotta warriors, where everything's out in the open air. Charlie and Forrest and I went to Pizza Hut and it cost 250Y for the three of us, which is ridiculously expensive. Pizza Hut is a fancy restaurant in China. They had escargot on the menu. The salad bar was 28Y (a lot) and you only got to go once, so we saw a whole bunch of people stacking cucumbers and fruit on the rim of their bowl in orderly little rows maybe three inches high, to make their bowl bigger. A lot of people were doing it, which made me love China because I think I'd look very cheap if I did that in the US. I also wrote a bunch of postcards, and watched HBO Asia some more while I was writing them. It's the only channel my TV gets clearly.
Tuesday, 6/26: Our first day of class! We have exactly 30 students. We mostly did icebreakers and played games today, and then I spent maybe 45 minutes giving a lesson on digital logic, and Forrest administered his math diagnostic test. First we introduced ourselves, then we split the students up into 3 groups and played 2 truths and a lie, where each student read three statements about him or herself and then the teacher guessed which one was false. One boy's lie was "I have a girlfriend," which made all the other students laugh really loudly (I think schools in China prohibit their students from dating). Then we had each student ask a question about American culture or the teacher. Forrest and his circle loved it, I thought it went pretty well, and Charlie thought that it was scary, because for some reason his group asked him a ton of questions about politics like did he think the Iraq War was justified and questions about Bush etc. Two of my students asked me if I liked Bush, and I just answered truthfully that I was neutral because it is not time to vote right now.
In the afternoon, I went to the Californian exchange students' Chinese class. It is taught by Grace, who took us to the tomb yesterday. It is good because they are studying lists of vocabulary like colors, clothing, medical things, and weather, and my vocabulary is the thing that really needs work.
Wednesday, 6/27: Second day of class. We got down to business today. I lectured first (at 7:40 am), then Charlie, then Forrest. I like going first because in the morning the students pay attention and answer your questions. By the end of the day they're looking out the window and putting their heads on the desks. For a break, we played some more Mafia and played the song "Pimpin' All Over the World" and had the students fill in missing words in the lyrics. We told the students that "pimpin'" meant "having lots of friends, money, and style", which is basically what it means in American slang by now.
Thursday, 6/28: Teaching is so much easier than I expected! When I came to China, I had only prepared a 1.5-hour lecture, and I was worried about what I would teach. But I forgot about giving the students problems to do, plus each day reviewing what we did the day before, so I've been teaching that material for 3 days... so far. Teaching is also pretty fun. I never knew I could talk for an hour straight. Well, I could probably talk to Sunita for an hour straight. Today we started watching "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" with the students. They like it, because it's an awesome movie. The songs are very good and I have it stuck in my head.
Charlie and I decided we did not want more school food (there's less options for vegetarians) so we went to a restaurant across the street. It turns out it's famous for Peking duck, but they had other good food. Charlie got pineapple sticky rice, which had been baked inside the pineapple that it came in, plus it had an umbrella and a root vegetable flower and artistic arrangements of berries on the plate. I got a tofu skin dish, which came on a hotpot boiler thing. It was very delicious, and I got to take leftovers home. Good meal. The total was 100Y (50Y a person), which is pretty expensive, but it turns out I'm rich in China.
Friday, 6/29: We started working in the computer lab today. The students are using an applet (http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xLogicCircuits/index.html) to design digital logic circuits. Today they built an OR gate using ANDs and NOTs, and an XOR gate. That took a half hour of lecturing plus an hour in the computer lab. I'm glad that teaching is turning out to be so much easier than I expected. The students are so bright, too. We finished watching "Willy Wonka." We taught the students some American slang, and they performed a skit based on each word, including "bffl" (best friends for life), "gangsta swagger," "geek," "ghetto fabulous," and "OMG," as well as some others that are not my fault (but the skit on "bootylicious" was pretty funny, and the skit on "pimp" featured the next-in-line for chairman of China). It's because we defined "bootylicious" as "attractive" and "pimp" as "someone with lots of money, friends, and style".
Saturday is our day off, so we went out in the evening. We went into Xi'an for dinner, and ate at an inexpensive restaurant on a side street. Then we went down De-something-xiang, a street with a lot of coffee shops and bars, and I had juice and popcorn (sweet, not salty :( ) and Forrest and Charlie had beers while we listened to their live music, which was a guy playing a guitar and singing Chinese romantic songs. Then we went to a different bar, where I had water (free! pretty incredible in China) and we met a nice waitress who's studying to be an English teacher. Their live music was pretty good and included "Hotel California." Then we tried to find a club to dance in. The first one did not have a dance floor. Instead they had those people who were hired to dance on a platform (EVERYWHERE has this - you can't escape it!), but this place had guys as well as girls, so at least they had gender equality. Their bathrooms also had toilet paper (very classy), but it was on the wall where the paper towels go, so I didn't discover this until after I used the toilet. I'd forgotten to bring tissues, so I was considering using paper money, until I found a receipt crumpled up in the bottom of my camera bag. Then we went to a different club, which actually had a dance floor! This club also gave two free beers to every foreigner who came (is it because the cool clubs all have foreigners? or because foreigners will buy lots of alcohol?) We danced for a long time, and it was fun because Chinese people are pretty shy about dancing but once we started dancing other people did too. We met some college students, including a shy girl who spoke really good English. I got her to dance for a while, and I think she enjoyed it. If one of the girls danced with Charlie or Forrest, then all the other girls would scream encouragingly for as long as they danced, which drove Charlie nuts but I thought it was funny. In the cab ride on the way home, Charlie stuck his head out the window and lost his favorite hat, which he bought in Japan, that has a (fake) $100 bill on it. (In Shanghai, the tea girls who try to scam you into buying super expensive tea tried to claw the bill off of his hat.)
Saturday, 6/30: Today was our day off. We all slept until about 11:30, which feels ridiculously late now. We walked to the swimming pool at an athletic club four or five blocks down the road. It was super hot so I was drenched by the time we got there. It's 30Y to swim but it was worth it. You have to wear a swim cap, and guys are required to wear those tight shorts or speedos, so we had gone shopping at the super-supermarket to buy some. Afterwards we went out for a late lunch/early dinner. We just wandered around and asked some guy "fanguanr zai nali?" (where's a restaurant?) and he led us like 3 blocks into this gated-off apartment complex that had a bunch of really cheap restaurants, so we each had a big bowl of noodles for 6Y.
Sunday, 7/1: We had class again today, to make up for not having class last Monday. 6 of our students had to leave the class because they are doing some sort of high school prep class during the summer. We got 6 new students, which is tricky because they don't know anything we taught last week, especially the digital logic. We went to the computer lab until 9 am, and the students designed circuits to multiply and add 1 digit numbers, and a 2 digit number & a 1 digit number. One student, Jack, succesfully designed a circuit to add two 2-digit numbers, which is considerably trickier. Then the students had a competition for which team of 3 people could build the tallest tower using one sheet of paper and 6 inches of tape. The winner was maybe 4 feet high. In the afternoon we watched "Requiem for a Dream" (kind of depressing... it's about people who get addicted to drugs and end up miserable) and went to the supermarket. I think we also played frisbee. I'm getting better at catching the frisbee (maybe 50% of the time) but I still can't aim it to save my life.
Monday, 7/2: Computer lab this morning - students worked on circuits to add 2 digits + 1 digit (not too hard), 2 digits + 2 digits (hard), and multiply 2 digits by 1 digit (not hard). Charlie did logic puzzles with the students - the kind that are like "Susan did not go out to dinner on Tuesday. Carol did have Mexican food. Somebody ate Italian food on Wednesday. etc" and you have to figure out who ate what type of food on which day. I like these puzzles. In the afternoon, we watched "Being John Malkovich" and the Internet on Charlie's computer broke so we have to go to the school computer lab to use the internet now.
Tuesday, 7/3: Last day in the computer lab. Due to the discovery that the applet can "iconify" circuits you design, turning them into gates, the students were able to design 2+2 and 2x2 circuits much more easily. Then they designed switches, which were able to switch between two inputs A&B so that the output depended on A or on B depending on whether the switch was on or off. Then they built a small binary calculator, which could add or multiply 2 digit binary numbers and you could switch between addition and multiplication. Maybe 7 students (out of about 27) finished. The others got most of the way there though, and everyone but the new students at least designed circuits that could add and multiply 2 digit numbers. We spent two hours in the computer lab because Charlie took groups out for half an hour at a time to have a debate on the question "Should students have to wear school uniforms?" The debates went well. Charlie also talked about hip hop and indie rock to the students and played some songs for them, and we played some music that the students had brought in to share. A popular band here is "Blue" from England, and Jay Chou is probably the most popular Chinese artist.
In the afternoon, we went to Sai ge Diannao Cheng (an enormous computer market) to look for a part that would allow us to plug the ethernet cable into the USB port on Charlie's computer so it could go on the internet. We found a part and paid 50Y but it didn't work. Oh well. Then we went into Xi'an and went to a coffee shop where I had a giant rainbow smoothie for 28Y and Charlie had a teensy weensy coffee for 28Y. We went to a big bookstore by the Bell Tower, and I bought "Jane Eyre" and a textbook to practice Chinese characters. We also went to the post office and I bought more postcards and international stamps. I paid for the stamps, which cost 54Y for 12, with a 100Y bill and then walked out. 45 minutes later I ran back into the post office but luckily the lady at the desk remembered me and handed me my change. We went to a buffet for dinner. It cost 38Y per person and you get so much. There was a giant fruit table, and a stirfry section where they stirfried all different kinds of meat (not so strong on the veggies) and a sushi section that made veggie rolls just for Charlie, and a giant table with different dishes on two sides, and another table with those steamer boxes that dumplings come in that had all sorts of foods - including pastries stuffed with bean paste that looked like pumpkins and had a little raisin for the stem. And a giant dessert table and sodas and juices and tea and water and beer if you wanted it. And a whole table of things for hotpot. I stuffed myself. My favorite things were these squash dumpling things with a strong sesame flavor, and spinach with peanut sauce, and noodles with cinnamon in the sauce. Mmmmm. Food food food.
Wednesday, 7/4: Today I gave my last lecture (on simplifying logical expressions, because the students frequently designed really complicated ways to do relatively simple things). Forrest presented on blues and jazz and played some songs for the students. Forrest lectured and Charlie did logic puzzles with the students for a while, then the students started building bridges out of chopsticks. The students get 50 pairs of chopsticks, paper, and glue, to span 35 cm, and they are competing to see whose bridge will hold the most weight. I decided to build a bridge too, but I was lazy so it is a bad bridge.
After class I went to the teachers' computer lab and worked on the character workbook and searched youtube for a video from "Stomp!" to show the students when I introduce step dancing. Forrest got skype working, which we can use to make calls to regular phones in the US, but then it got uninstalled somehow and only one person at the school that we know of has a working microphone. I also worked on writing postcards, and played frisbee with Forrest in the rain. I caught it one-handed and over my head! (Once.) Definitely making progress.
Now that we're settled in at a high school, the days go much more slowly - more everyday, mundane. I'm still enjoying myself but I'm looking forward to traveling to Hua Shan on Friday.
Sunday, 6/24: Charlie was sick. Alice took Forrest and I to the Shaanxi Province History Museum and the Wild Goose Pagoda. At the museum, there was a golden horse-dragon-scorpion monster that was cool-looking. Everything in the gift shops was ridiculously expensive (hundreds to tens of thousands of yuan) - there weren't key chains or anything for the poor students who visit. We didn't stay long at the pagoda since it was blazing hot and it was mostly outdoor gardens. The pagoda was a seven layer tower. We watched "V for Vendetta" on HBO that evening. I was afraid I wouldn't like it because I don't like violent movies, but I did like it. It was pretty good. V reminded me of Sheila.
Monday, 6/25: We went to a two-thousand-year-old emperor's tomb with the Californian exchange students. The set-up of the museum was really nice - the whole museum is underground, and they have the excavated pits enclosed in thermal glass, that people can walk on top of, so that they can control the temperature and lighting and humidity inside the pits to preserve the relics, unlike at the terracotta warriors, where everything's out in the open air. Charlie and Forrest and I went to Pizza Hut and it cost 250Y for the three of us, which is ridiculously expensive. Pizza Hut is a fancy restaurant in China. They had escargot on the menu. The salad bar was 28Y (a lot) and you only got to go once, so we saw a whole bunch of people stacking cucumbers and fruit on the rim of their bowl in orderly little rows maybe three inches high, to make their bowl bigger. A lot of people were doing it, which made me love China because I think I'd look very cheap if I did that in the US. I also wrote a bunch of postcards, and watched HBO Asia some more while I was writing them. It's the only channel my TV gets clearly.
Tuesday, 6/26: Our first day of class! We have exactly 30 students. We mostly did icebreakers and played games today, and then I spent maybe 45 minutes giving a lesson on digital logic, and Forrest administered his math diagnostic test. First we introduced ourselves, then we split the students up into 3 groups and played 2 truths and a lie, where each student read three statements about him or herself and then the teacher guessed which one was false. One boy's lie was "I have a girlfriend," which made all the other students laugh really loudly (I think schools in China prohibit their students from dating). Then we had each student ask a question about American culture or the teacher. Forrest and his circle loved it, I thought it went pretty well, and Charlie thought that it was scary, because for some reason his group asked him a ton of questions about politics like did he think the Iraq War was justified and questions about Bush etc. Two of my students asked me if I liked Bush, and I just answered truthfully that I was neutral because it is not time to vote right now.
In the afternoon, I went to the Californian exchange students' Chinese class. It is taught by Grace, who took us to the tomb yesterday. It is good because they are studying lists of vocabulary like colors, clothing, medical things, and weather, and my vocabulary is the thing that really needs work.
Wednesday, 6/27: Second day of class. We got down to business today. I lectured first (at 7:40 am), then Charlie, then Forrest. I like going first because in the morning the students pay attention and answer your questions. By the end of the day they're looking out the window and putting their heads on the desks. For a break, we played some more Mafia and played the song "Pimpin' All Over the World" and had the students fill in missing words in the lyrics. We told the students that "pimpin'" meant "having lots of friends, money, and style", which is basically what it means in American slang by now.
Thursday, 6/28: Teaching is so much easier than I expected! When I came to China, I had only prepared a 1.5-hour lecture, and I was worried about what I would teach. But I forgot about giving the students problems to do, plus each day reviewing what we did the day before, so I've been teaching that material for 3 days... so far. Teaching is also pretty fun. I never knew I could talk for an hour straight. Well, I could probably talk to Sunita for an hour straight. Today we started watching "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" with the students. They like it, because it's an awesome movie. The songs are very good and I have it stuck in my head.
Charlie and I decided we did not want more school food (there's less options for vegetarians) so we went to a restaurant across the street. It turns out it's famous for Peking duck, but they had other good food. Charlie got pineapple sticky rice, which had been baked inside the pineapple that it came in, plus it had an umbrella and a root vegetable flower and artistic arrangements of berries on the plate. I got a tofu skin dish, which came on a hotpot boiler thing. It was very delicious, and I got to take leftovers home. Good meal. The total was 100Y (50Y a person), which is pretty expensive, but it turns out I'm rich in China.
Friday, 6/29: We started working in the computer lab today. The students are using an applet (http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xLogicCircuits/index.html) to design digital logic circuits. Today they built an OR gate using ANDs and NOTs, and an XOR gate. That took a half hour of lecturing plus an hour in the computer lab. I'm glad that teaching is turning out to be so much easier than I expected. The students are so bright, too. We finished watching "Willy Wonka." We taught the students some American slang, and they performed a skit based on each word, including "bffl" (best friends for life), "gangsta swagger," "geek," "ghetto fabulous," and "OMG," as well as some others that are not my fault (but the skit on "bootylicious" was pretty funny, and the skit on "pimp" featured the next-in-line for chairman of China). It's because we defined "bootylicious" as "attractive" and "pimp" as "someone with lots of money, friends, and style".
Saturday is our day off, so we went out in the evening. We went into Xi'an for dinner, and ate at an inexpensive restaurant on a side street. Then we went down De-something-xiang, a street with a lot of coffee shops and bars, and I had juice and popcorn (sweet, not salty :( ) and Forrest and Charlie had beers while we listened to their live music, which was a guy playing a guitar and singing Chinese romantic songs. Then we went to a different bar, where I had water (free! pretty incredible in China) and we met a nice waitress who's studying to be an English teacher. Their live music was pretty good and included "Hotel California." Then we tried to find a club to dance in. The first one did not have a dance floor. Instead they had those people who were hired to dance on a platform (EVERYWHERE has this - you can't escape it!), but this place had guys as well as girls, so at least they had gender equality. Their bathrooms also had toilet paper (very classy), but it was on the wall where the paper towels go, so I didn't discover this until after I used the toilet. I'd forgotten to bring tissues, so I was considering using paper money, until I found a receipt crumpled up in the bottom of my camera bag. Then we went to a different club, which actually had a dance floor! This club also gave two free beers to every foreigner who came (is it because the cool clubs all have foreigners? or because foreigners will buy lots of alcohol?) We danced for a long time, and it was fun because Chinese people are pretty shy about dancing but once we started dancing other people did too. We met some college students, including a shy girl who spoke really good English. I got her to dance for a while, and I think she enjoyed it. If one of the girls danced with Charlie or Forrest, then all the other girls would scream encouragingly for as long as they danced, which drove Charlie nuts but I thought it was funny. In the cab ride on the way home, Charlie stuck his head out the window and lost his favorite hat, which he bought in Japan, that has a (fake) $100 bill on it. (In Shanghai, the tea girls who try to scam you into buying super expensive tea tried to claw the bill off of his hat.)
Saturday, 6/30: Today was our day off. We all slept until about 11:30, which feels ridiculously late now. We walked to the swimming pool at an athletic club four or five blocks down the road. It was super hot so I was drenched by the time we got there. It's 30Y to swim but it was worth it. You have to wear a swim cap, and guys are required to wear those tight shorts or speedos, so we had gone shopping at the super-supermarket to buy some. Afterwards we went out for a late lunch/early dinner. We just wandered around and asked some guy "fanguanr zai nali?" (where's a restaurant?) and he led us like 3 blocks into this gated-off apartment complex that had a bunch of really cheap restaurants, so we each had a big bowl of noodles for 6Y.
Sunday, 7/1: We had class again today, to make up for not having class last Monday. 6 of our students had to leave the class because they are doing some sort of high school prep class during the summer. We got 6 new students, which is tricky because they don't know anything we taught last week, especially the digital logic. We went to the computer lab until 9 am, and the students designed circuits to multiply and add 1 digit numbers, and a 2 digit number & a 1 digit number. One student, Jack, succesfully designed a circuit to add two 2-digit numbers, which is considerably trickier. Then the students had a competition for which team of 3 people could build the tallest tower using one sheet of paper and 6 inches of tape. The winner was maybe 4 feet high. In the afternoon we watched "Requiem for a Dream" (kind of depressing... it's about people who get addicted to drugs and end up miserable) and went to the supermarket. I think we also played frisbee. I'm getting better at catching the frisbee (maybe 50% of the time) but I still can't aim it to save my life.
Monday, 7/2: Computer lab this morning - students worked on circuits to add 2 digits + 1 digit (not too hard), 2 digits + 2 digits (hard), and multiply 2 digits by 1 digit (not hard). Charlie did logic puzzles with the students - the kind that are like "Susan did not go out to dinner on Tuesday. Carol did have Mexican food. Somebody ate Italian food on Wednesday. etc" and you have to figure out who ate what type of food on which day. I like these puzzles. In the afternoon, we watched "Being John Malkovich" and the Internet on Charlie's computer broke so we have to go to the school computer lab to use the internet now.
Tuesday, 7/3: Last day in the computer lab. Due to the discovery that the applet can "iconify" circuits you design, turning them into gates, the students were able to design 2+2 and 2x2 circuits much more easily. Then they designed switches, which were able to switch between two inputs A&B so that the output depended on A or on B depending on whether the switch was on or off. Then they built a small binary calculator, which could add or multiply 2 digit binary numbers and you could switch between addition and multiplication. Maybe 7 students (out of about 27) finished. The others got most of the way there though, and everyone but the new students at least designed circuits that could add and multiply 2 digit numbers. We spent two hours in the computer lab because Charlie took groups out for half an hour at a time to have a debate on the question "Should students have to wear school uniforms?" The debates went well. Charlie also talked about hip hop and indie rock to the students and played some songs for them, and we played some music that the students had brought in to share. A popular band here is "Blue" from England, and Jay Chou is probably the most popular Chinese artist.
In the afternoon, we went to Sai ge Diannao Cheng (an enormous computer market) to look for a part that would allow us to plug the ethernet cable into the USB port on Charlie's computer so it could go on the internet. We found a part and paid 50Y but it didn't work. Oh well. Then we went into Xi'an and went to a coffee shop where I had a giant rainbow smoothie for 28Y and Charlie had a teensy weensy coffee for 28Y. We went to a big bookstore by the Bell Tower, and I bought "Jane Eyre" and a textbook to practice Chinese characters. We also went to the post office and I bought more postcards and international stamps. I paid for the stamps, which cost 54Y for 12, with a 100Y bill and then walked out. 45 minutes later I ran back into the post office but luckily the lady at the desk remembered me and handed me my change. We went to a buffet for dinner. It cost 38Y per person and you get so much. There was a giant fruit table, and a stirfry section where they stirfried all different kinds of meat (not so strong on the veggies) and a sushi section that made veggie rolls just for Charlie, and a giant table with different dishes on two sides, and another table with those steamer boxes that dumplings come in that had all sorts of foods - including pastries stuffed with bean paste that looked like pumpkins and had a little raisin for the stem. And a giant dessert table and sodas and juices and tea and water and beer if you wanted it. And a whole table of things for hotpot. I stuffed myself. My favorite things were these squash dumpling things with a strong sesame flavor, and spinach with peanut sauce, and noodles with cinnamon in the sauce. Mmmmm. Food food food.
Wednesday, 7/4: Today I gave my last lecture (on simplifying logical expressions, because the students frequently designed really complicated ways to do relatively simple things). Forrest presented on blues and jazz and played some songs for the students. Forrest lectured and Charlie did logic puzzles with the students for a while, then the students started building bridges out of chopsticks. The students get 50 pairs of chopsticks, paper, and glue, to span 35 cm, and they are competing to see whose bridge will hold the most weight. I decided to build a bridge too, but I was lazy so it is a bad bridge.
After class I went to the teachers' computer lab and worked on the character workbook and searched youtube for a video from "Stomp!" to show the students when I introduce step dancing. Forrest got skype working, which we can use to make calls to regular phones in the US, but then it got uninstalled somehow and only one person at the school that we know of has a working microphone. I also worked on writing postcards, and played frisbee with Forrest in the rain. I caught it one-handed and over my head! (Once.) Definitely making progress.
Now that we're settled in at a high school, the days go much more slowly - more everyday, mundane. I'm still enjoying myself but I'm looking forward to traveling to Hua Shan on Friday.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Xi'an
Wednesday, 6/20 - Thursday, 6/21: Train from Lhasa to Xi'an, 36 hours. Had hard sleepers, mercifully. The ceiling whistled. Played enough spades for the rest of my life. Met a girl Ziyu (both 4th tone) from Hunan who is studying accounting at Arizona State University and staying with a family there, and she brought her host mother to tour China this summer. We were met at the train station by Grace and a driver whose name I do not know, so we said goodbye to Christopher who is flying from Xi'an to Beijing, and then from Beijing to America, early tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how Grace is affiliated with Xi'an Gao Xin No. 1 High School (which actually has five campuses including middle schools and high schools and an international school). Then Alice, an administrative assistant, got into the van we were in somewhere in Xi'an and showed us our rooms. They are super nice with TVs and personal bathrooms and kitchens (that do not have stoves, but do have water coolers and fridges and sinks and Charlie's has a microwave) and double beds and very executive-looking desks and more cabinets than I could fill up if I had all my stuff from home. I'm happy to have my own room, for the first time in China.
Friday, 6/22: This morning we met Alice and she took us to breakfast. They gave us cards with 100Y on them to buy food at the school. Since food in the cafeteria is pretty cheap, this should last us. Then we went to meet with Jane, who looks very young but mentioned her husband, who is our contact at the school. We told her about our curriculum and when we wanted to teach. We met the school's Party Secretary, Madame Jiao, and she set us up with hard sleeper tickets to Guilin on our last Friday here. We agreed to teach every day from 7:40 to 11:40, except Sunday, starting Tuesday. Our students are 15 years old. They are doing their high school admission exams this weekend, so they will be pretty tired, which is why we are not teaching on Monday. We also briefly met the principal who administrates all five campuses. Everyone was concerned about me because my nose was running a lot, so Jane went to the school nurse and got me herbal medicine pills. I can't read anything on the package so I just take 3 pills 3 times a day like Jane told me to.
Paper products are so rare in China. There's never toilet paper in the bathrooms, not to mention paper towels, and Madame Jiao was the only person who had tissues. On the train, my nose was running so Charlie grabbed some napkins (maybe 10) out of the bag behind the food counter. A waitress ran up to me, scolded "Tai duo le!" and grabbed half of them back. That said Xi'an Gaoxin has been very nice - my bathroom came with toilet paper!
At lunch, we met a couple of the exchange students (just graduated high school) from California. They were very nice. They have Chinese lessons at 1:30 in the afternoon so I might try to join in with their class.
In the afternoon, Alice took us to the international campus. She says she doesn't know why it's called international. She also said that the senior campus, where we are staying, has better students. If I went to a Xi'an Gaoxin school, I'd want to be a less good student then, because the international campus was awesome! They had a robots room with a drill press and some other power tools and circuit boards and a robotic plastic child-sized car that drives itself and another robot that navigates the streets of a toy town and various other robots. They had a cooking room with a set up with a pan and a knife and an apron, etc, for each student, and a sewing room with a sewing machine for each student. They had an art room where students all made pottery, and lecture halls almost as big as at MIT, and much nicer. They had a weights room that included those old-fashioned "exercise" machines that ladies in the fifties used where you put a belt around your butt and stand there while it vibrates, and a whole ping pong room. The gym teacher taught me to play ping pong. I'm very bad at it. They also had a whole gymnastics room.
Alice took us to the grocery store, too. In China the term "supermarket" is taken very seriously. It was similar to a Walmart Superstore, one of the giant Walmarts that you could live in.
This keyboard keeps highlighting paragraphs and deleting them. It's driving me nuts. I don't know what's causing it either.
Saturday, 6/23: This morning we met Alice at 8:30 am to go to see the terracotta warriors. They were only discovered in 1974 by a t farmers digging a new well. They are very impressive. There are so many of them, and they each have different facial features and facial expressions. There are chariots and infantrymen and archers and generals. They are all lifesize. Then we went into Xi'an to the town. We wandered around and bought dinner and discussed the nature of the universe and the meaning of "meaning" (either frustrating or interesting, I wasn't sure) and my dinner was fried rice and spicy mushroom soup and I overate again and I had two ice cream popsicles today. Then, around 9 pm, we saw these people beating drums and marching in an intricate pattern and waving decorative umbrellas and bells and things. About half of them were white tourists, so I wonder if it was a special occasion or something that happens regularly so that tour groups can see it.
This keyboard is driving me nuts.
In China, especially in Xining, my name is "hello." Lots of random people will say hello to anyone that looks like a waiguoren (foreigner). This is less true in Xi'an because there are so many white people here. At the tourist destinations, I've seen more white people than anywhere else in China. I've also seen people who are not white or Chinese, which is also rare. At the museum I heard someone behind us (other white people) say, "Gosh, there are so many white people here." No one really wants to be where all the white people are because people want to avoid the big tourist destinations and feel like we're seeing the "real" China.
China is starting to seem less foreign to me. I've stopped having the urge to take a picture anytime I see a pointy roof. Also, I think that Xi'an is less exotic than Lhasa is less exotic than Xining. The area where the school is in Xi'an is very rich. A few blocks away, there is a Starbucks and a Pizza Hut. Also, the restaurant down the street puts your leftovers in boxes for you, instead of dumping it straight into recycled grocery bags like they did in Xining.
After seeing the dancing people, we went into a bar across from the bus station. It had the dancing non-strippers again (who mercifully went away a couple minutes after we arrived), and a TV showing every single Christina Aguilera music video ever. I would like to go out with Chinese people and learn the dice game that they like to play.
I heard that there was a curfew in Xi'an but we got back a little after 11 and the gate was still open so I think we're fine.
Friday, 6/22: This morning we met Alice and she took us to breakfast. They gave us cards with 100Y on them to buy food at the school. Since food in the cafeteria is pretty cheap, this should last us. Then we went to meet with Jane, who looks very young but mentioned her husband, who is our contact at the school. We told her about our curriculum and when we wanted to teach. We met the school's Party Secretary, Madame Jiao, and she set us up with hard sleeper tickets to Guilin on our last Friday here. We agreed to teach every day from 7:40 to 11:40, except Sunday, starting Tuesday. Our students are 15 years old. They are doing their high school admission exams this weekend, so they will be pretty tired, which is why we are not teaching on Monday. We also briefly met the principal who administrates all five campuses. Everyone was concerned about me because my nose was running a lot, so Jane went to the school nurse and got me herbal medicine pills. I can't read anything on the package so I just take 3 pills 3 times a day like Jane told me to.
Paper products are so rare in China. There's never toilet paper in the bathrooms, not to mention paper towels, and Madame Jiao was the only person who had tissues. On the train, my nose was running so Charlie grabbed some napkins (maybe 10) out of the bag behind the food counter. A waitress ran up to me, scolded "Tai duo le!" and grabbed half of them back. That said Xi'an Gaoxin has been very nice - my bathroom came with toilet paper!
At lunch, we met a couple of the exchange students (just graduated high school) from California. They were very nice. They have Chinese lessons at 1:30 in the afternoon so I might try to join in with their class.
In the afternoon, Alice took us to the international campus. She says she doesn't know why it's called international. She also said that the senior campus, where we are staying, has better students. If I went to a Xi'an Gaoxin school, I'd want to be a less good student then, because the international campus was awesome! They had a robots room with a drill press and some other power tools and circuit boards and a robotic plastic child-sized car that drives itself and another robot that navigates the streets of a toy town and various other robots. They had a cooking room with a set up with a pan and a knife and an apron, etc, for each student, and a sewing room with a sewing machine for each student. They had an art room where students all made pottery, and lecture halls almost as big as at MIT, and much nicer. They had a weights room that included those old-fashioned "exercise" machines that ladies in the fifties used where you put a belt around your butt and stand there while it vibrates, and a whole ping pong room. The gym teacher taught me to play ping pong. I'm very bad at it. They also had a whole gymnastics room.
Alice took us to the grocery store, too. In China the term "supermarket" is taken very seriously. It was similar to a Walmart Superstore, one of the giant Walmarts that you could live in.
This keyboard keeps highlighting paragraphs and deleting them. It's driving me nuts. I don't know what's causing it either.
Saturday, 6/23: This morning we met Alice at 8:30 am to go to see the terracotta warriors. They were only discovered in 1974 by a t farmers digging a new well. They are very impressive. There are so many of them, and they each have different facial features and facial expressions. There are chariots and infantrymen and archers and generals. They are all lifesize. Then we went into Xi'an to the town. We wandered around and bought dinner and discussed the nature of the universe and the meaning of "meaning" (either frustrating or interesting, I wasn't sure) and my dinner was fried rice and spicy mushroom soup and I overate again and I had two ice cream popsicles today. Then, around 9 pm, we saw these people beating drums and marching in an intricate pattern and waving decorative umbrellas and bells and things. About half of them were white tourists, so I wonder if it was a special occasion or something that happens regularly so that tour groups can see it.
This keyboard is driving me nuts.
In China, especially in Xining, my name is "hello." Lots of random people will say hello to anyone that looks like a waiguoren (foreigner). This is less true in Xi'an because there are so many white people here. At the tourist destinations, I've seen more white people than anywhere else in China. I've also seen people who are not white or Chinese, which is also rare. At the museum I heard someone behind us (other white people) say, "Gosh, there are so many white people here." No one really wants to be where all the white people are because people want to avoid the big tourist destinations and feel like we're seeing the "real" China.
China is starting to seem less foreign to me. I've stopped having the urge to take a picture anytime I see a pointy roof. Also, I think that Xi'an is less exotic than Lhasa is less exotic than Xining. The area where the school is in Xi'an is very rich. A few blocks away, there is a Starbucks and a Pizza Hut. Also, the restaurant down the street puts your leftovers in boxes for you, instead of dumping it straight into recycled grocery bags like they did in Xining.
After seeing the dancing people, we went into a bar across from the bus station. It had the dancing non-strippers again (who mercifully went away a couple minutes after we arrived), and a TV showing every single Christina Aguilera music video ever. I would like to go out with Chinese people and learn the dice game that they like to play.
I heard that there was a curfew in Xi'an but we got back a little after 11 and the gate was still open so I think we're fine.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Tibet
Friday & Saturday, 6/15-6/16: We had hard seat tickets for the train from Xining to Lhasa, which made for an absolutely hellish night. I ended up sleeping on newspaper on the floor between random strangers' feet with my heat under one seat, my legs under another, and my hips (too big to fit under a seat) in the air in between. I didn't fall asleep until about 4:30, and then everyone on the train woke up and started talking around 6 am. Once the night was over, it got better and we met nice Chinese people (conversation initiated because this middle-aged guy wanted to take a picture of me with my hair down), and then we played cards and ate and I read my book. I also worked on my scarf (turquoise and white and orange) but then this Tibetan woman saw it and wanted to work on it a bit, and then didn't give it back. I wasn't really in the mood for knitting so I didn't try to demand it back and about 5 hours later she brought me a completed scarf with fancy vertical stripes and checkers and things. I want to learn how to do that sort of thing. Charlie saw a family hold their baby girl out over the aisle with her pants down to urinate in the aisle. In the hard seat cars, pretty much anything is allowed (they never even checked our tickets), but when we tried to sit on the floor next to the soft sleeper car because there were no people or urine there, a lady in uniform kicked us out. We played spades for almost 5 hours. Forrest and I won both times, which is important. Christopher was sick from hotpot we had for lunch on Friday (he had lots of meat, whereas I had lots of veggies) and ended up lying in a sad ball on the floor all Friday night.
Sunday, 6/17: This was our first day in Tibet. In the morning we went to a 1300-year-old temple, built by some Tibetan king when a Nepalese and a Chinese princess came to marry him. I didn't like it that much because it was packed full of tour groups and it was too noisy and filled with incense smoke which was bad news because I'm not quite adjusted to the thinner air yet. Then we sat in line to get tickets to see the big fancy palace tomorrow, and then we ate lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I ordered "sweet beans with butter" and "cheese dumplings." The sweet beans were like boiled peanuts soaked in sugar syrup, except that they looked more like roots. I ate some because I wanted protein, but I do not as a rule like sweet entrees. I was relieved when the cheese dumplings came but they were filled with this sour shredded stuff that was not really cheese and they were really sweet too! The waitresses were really nice though: they said they like Americans because America is Tibet's best friend and that they don't like China, which seemed pretty bold, especially since we were communicating in Mandarin because that was our only common language. They also wanted to know if there were many Tibetan students in the US, but I don't think I know any so I just told them "probably." Charlie and I left the restaurant and went and bought tofu and noodles at a small corner shop, which was much more satisfying. Then we went to a monastery which was really cool. The monks who spoke English liked to talk to us, probably because we're an interruption to their routine. In the first hall/temple we went to, the man speaking to us kept turning to this young boy for directions and answers. He said about the boy "he says you may take pictures here" and if we asked a question that he didn't know the answer to, then he would translate for the boy and get an answer from him. I thought that was really cool, that a boy who looked about 12 years old would be ostensibly in charge of a whole temple there. Then we went to a debate in a courtyard, where a whole bunch of young monks were shouting at each other. It was awesome! One would be standing across from another sitting cross-legged. The standing one would heatedly make an argument, and while making his argument he would take his prayer beads (which they seem to always carry) and string them over his left arm like he was drawing a bow. Then he would pull back his right arm all the way and balance on one foot like a martial arts position, then suddenly, as he finished his argument, CLAP his hands together, leaning in towards the sitting guy. The sitting one would calmly respond, and then the standing guy would do it all over again. It cost 15Y to take pictures in this courtyard and I was too cheap, but as I walked around I noticed two separate Chinese tourists taking my picture. This also happens on the streets. To them, I guess long blond hair is about as strange as an extra eye.
Later that afternoon, we went to the market. I spent almost 100Y on bracelets and a prayer flag and things. I felt kind of silly but bargaining was fun. If you didn't bargain you would get miserably ripped off because I paid 10Y for a bracelet that the lady originally said was 65Y, and I suspect that I still paid much more than it was worth. I wanted a cloth lantern but found no price better than 90Y, which is definitely not how much it is worth. My rule in Tibet is divide the price by two, then say, "Would you pay that many American dollars for it?" So I would pay $5 for a pretty bracelet, but not $45 for a cloth lantern.
Monday, 6/18: I woke up at 7:30 am and vomited. Never eat so much food that the buttons are your shirt are almost going to pop off. It was more than overeating, though, because within a few hours I had a fever. Don't drink the tap water, or water from sketchy scratched up bottles that look like they've already been used. I sprayed my sheets with OFF! in an effort to get the mini-flies to leave me alone (there must have been about a hundred cluttered all over my bed). Someone messed up the process of buying our tickets so we are leaving for Xi'an on Wednesday morning, not Thursday, so our trip to Namtsou Lake will happen all in one day.
Tuesday, 6/19: This is my last evening in Tibet. Today we went to Namtsou Lake and hot springs. The entire trip cost us 600Y a piece which seemed very pricey, but it was nice to see Tibet outside of Lhasa. I loved the drive because the Tibet countryside is very beautiful. It looks like the Land Before Time. You get these wide plains framed on all sides by mountains, and then the clouds are so low to the earth that you can see cloud-shaped shadows rolling across the sides of the mountains, giving the whole landscape a very ethereal look. Plus there are random yaks and sheep and babbling brooks wandering around. We passed a military convoy consisting of almost 75 green trucks (yes I counted). As we were approaching them, they just looked like this endless green fence winding off into the distance. Namtsou was very pretty. I rode a yak for about a hundred feet. It was definitely not as cooperative as a horse. Its owner sang a song to it and pulled on the string through its nose, but it would just randomly stop every few feet, and then he'd have to pull a bunch and push it and lecture it to get it moving again. I've never heard of anyone saying "I'm going on a long journey - I'll ride a yak" - perhaps this is why. At Namtsou Lake I accidentally peed in the men's side of the bathhouse. It's a mercy nobody else walked in, because there were no stalls, only holes in the ground with small barriers in between.
After Namtsou Lake we went to a hot spring. It was essentially a heated swimming pool with a faintly sulfurous smell, but it felt really good. I forgot to bring the swimsuit I bought in Shanghai (which was too tight anyways) so I bought one there for 30Y. We tried out my camera, which can take underwater pictures. The first moment I took it underwater was really scary, but it worked! My camera can see really well underwater. The only problem is that I can't, so it was really hard to aim the camera, so the pictures aren't that great. But it's still really exciting. There was also a 33-year old woman in an inner tube who screamed whenever anyone bumped into her or accidentally splashed her while they were swimming. She told us she had an 8-year old son. Then she told our tour guide, Sonam, that she liked Forrest and she gave Forrest her business card. I ate pizza for dinner tonight, and then I ordered "fruit salad" and got a green salad. Forrest is sick, so it went Christopher, me, Forrest. Charlie is the only one yet to fall.
Sunday, 6/17: This was our first day in Tibet. In the morning we went to a 1300-year-old temple, built by some Tibetan king when a Nepalese and a Chinese princess came to marry him. I didn't like it that much because it was packed full of tour groups and it was too noisy and filled with incense smoke which was bad news because I'm not quite adjusted to the thinner air yet. Then we sat in line to get tickets to see the big fancy palace tomorrow, and then we ate lunch at a Tibetan restaurant. I ordered "sweet beans with butter" and "cheese dumplings." The sweet beans were like boiled peanuts soaked in sugar syrup, except that they looked more like roots. I ate some because I wanted protein, but I do not as a rule like sweet entrees. I was relieved when the cheese dumplings came but they were filled with this sour shredded stuff that was not really cheese and they were really sweet too! The waitresses were really nice though: they said they like Americans because America is Tibet's best friend and that they don't like China, which seemed pretty bold, especially since we were communicating in Mandarin because that was our only common language. They also wanted to know if there were many Tibetan students in the US, but I don't think I know any so I just told them "probably." Charlie and I left the restaurant and went and bought tofu and noodles at a small corner shop, which was much more satisfying. Then we went to a monastery which was really cool. The monks who spoke English liked to talk to us, probably because we're an interruption to their routine. In the first hall/temple we went to, the man speaking to us kept turning to this young boy for directions and answers. He said about the boy "he says you may take pictures here" and if we asked a question that he didn't know the answer to, then he would translate for the boy and get an answer from him. I thought that was really cool, that a boy who looked about 12 years old would be ostensibly in charge of a whole temple there. Then we went to a debate in a courtyard, where a whole bunch of young monks were shouting at each other. It was awesome! One would be standing across from another sitting cross-legged. The standing one would heatedly make an argument, and while making his argument he would take his prayer beads (which they seem to always carry) and string them over his left arm like he was drawing a bow. Then he would pull back his right arm all the way and balance on one foot like a martial arts position, then suddenly, as he finished his argument, CLAP his hands together, leaning in towards the sitting guy. The sitting one would calmly respond, and then the standing guy would do it all over again. It cost 15Y to take pictures in this courtyard and I was too cheap, but as I walked around I noticed two separate Chinese tourists taking my picture. This also happens on the streets. To them, I guess long blond hair is about as strange as an extra eye.
Later that afternoon, we went to the market. I spent almost 100Y on bracelets and a prayer flag and things. I felt kind of silly but bargaining was fun. If you didn't bargain you would get miserably ripped off because I paid 10Y for a bracelet that the lady originally said was 65Y, and I suspect that I still paid much more than it was worth. I wanted a cloth lantern but found no price better than 90Y, which is definitely not how much it is worth. My rule in Tibet is divide the price by two, then say, "Would you pay that many American dollars for it?" So I would pay $5 for a pretty bracelet, but not $45 for a cloth lantern.
Monday, 6/18: I woke up at 7:30 am and vomited. Never eat so much food that the buttons are your shirt are almost going to pop off. It was more than overeating, though, because within a few hours I had a fever. Don't drink the tap water, or water from sketchy scratched up bottles that look like they've already been used. I sprayed my sheets with OFF! in an effort to get the mini-flies to leave me alone (there must have been about a hundred cluttered all over my bed). Someone messed up the process of buying our tickets so we are leaving for Xi'an on Wednesday morning, not Thursday, so our trip to Namtsou Lake will happen all in one day.
Tuesday, 6/19: This is my last evening in Tibet. Today we went to Namtsou Lake and hot springs. The entire trip cost us 600Y a piece which seemed very pricey, but it was nice to see Tibet outside of Lhasa. I loved the drive because the Tibet countryside is very beautiful. It looks like the Land Before Time. You get these wide plains framed on all sides by mountains, and then the clouds are so low to the earth that you can see cloud-shaped shadows rolling across the sides of the mountains, giving the whole landscape a very ethereal look. Plus there are random yaks and sheep and babbling brooks wandering around. We passed a military convoy consisting of almost 75 green trucks (yes I counted). As we were approaching them, they just looked like this endless green fence winding off into the distance. Namtsou was very pretty. I rode a yak for about a hundred feet. It was definitely not as cooperative as a horse. Its owner sang a song to it and pulled on the string through its nose, but it would just randomly stop every few feet, and then he'd have to pull a bunch and push it and lecture it to get it moving again. I've never heard of anyone saying "I'm going on a long journey - I'll ride a yak" - perhaps this is why. At Namtsou Lake I accidentally peed in the men's side of the bathhouse. It's a mercy nobody else walked in, because there were no stalls, only holes in the ground with small barriers in between.
After Namtsou Lake we went to a hot spring. It was essentially a heated swimming pool with a faintly sulfurous smell, but it felt really good. I forgot to bring the swimsuit I bought in Shanghai (which was too tight anyways) so I bought one there for 30Y. We tried out my camera, which can take underwater pictures. The first moment I took it underwater was really scary, but it worked! My camera can see really well underwater. The only problem is that I can't, so it was really hard to aim the camera, so the pictures aren't that great. But it's still really exciting. There was also a 33-year old woman in an inner tube who screamed whenever anyone bumped into her or accidentally splashed her while they were swimming. She told us she had an 8-year old son. Then she told our tour guide, Sonam, that she liked Forrest and she gave Forrest her business card. I ate pizza for dinner tonight, and then I ordered "fruit salad" and got a green salad. Forrest is sick, so it went Christopher, me, Forrest. Charlie is the only one yet to fall.
Friday, June 15, 2007
And more....
Wednesday, 6/13: Yesterday evening we made arrangements to get hard seat tickets for the train for 450Y a piece, and this morning we got them. We are supposed to say that we bought them at the train station if the security guard asks. We were planning to go to Qinghai Lake today, but then someone told us this morning that the only bus was at 7 am (which later turned out to not be the case, there are buses every 30 minutes) plus the trip would cost us about 100Y each and Christopher wants to save money for Tibet, so we stayed in the city. We had a slow day until 3 pm.
I bought knitting at the giant street market (turquoise, cream, and red-orange yarn) and so I have enough to do forever, plus I have chinese lessons on my mp3 player, plus I have a loonnng fantasy book that I'm only about 170 pages into (and I'm a slow reader), plus there are puppies to play with, plus I can go talk stilted Chinese with people and look at shops (which are very exciting and different) and check prices and then be disgusted (a 100Y bracelet? please.), plus I need to upload my pictures from my camera onto facebook, plus I can go eat something new and different, plus I can take the bus and look out the window, plus I can wander around on the mountains because they don't belong to anybody except I have to make sure that the Chinese government isn't using them for missile target practice because Christopher saw that once, plus I want to review the lessons from Chinese III and IV to make my vocabulary and character recognition better, plus I like to just sit and daydream. I'm a very busy girl!
The puppies are named Lala and Sasa (like Lhasa). La is a 1st tone, so when you say Lala, it sounds really sweet and googoo-ey. Sa is a fourth tone, so when you say Sasa it sounds mad. Poor little Sasa must think she does everything wrong!
Around 3 pm we went to Ta'er Monastery. The directions said to catch a minibus from a certain bus stop, and there weren't any minibuses there, but there was a guy with a car that was not a taxi trying to get us to give him 30Y (way overcharging) to take us to Ta'er Si (si means temple or monastery, not sure). We went to the other side of the street and showed the characters for Ta'er Si to a lady at the bus stop and she was super nice and walked us a few blocks to the place where the minibuses come. The minibus was 5Y a person which was much better (in Xining, people spend yuan about the way we spend dollars). The minibus ride was pretty long but we saw lots of stuff through the windows. I also talked to a guy, who was a senior in college, who said "Hello" to me (since everyone studies English in school, although most people forget it right away, everyone knows "Hello" and likes to say it to the white people, and we say "Ni hao" back to show them that we speak Chinese even though we don't really) who actually spoke some English - probably about as much English as I spoke Chinese, so I spoke Mandarin and he spoke English. He wanted to know how long I was in Xining and offered to teach me English and wanted to know where my hostel was. I told him "No thanks, I'm only here for 5 days" and "Wo xiangbuqilai" (I forget) because even though he seemed perfectly well-meaning it seems weird to tell a stranger where I am staying.
Once in the big market here someone shouted "Hello, I love you!" at us. Can you imagine someone in America shouting "Ni hao, wo ai ni!" at a Chinese-looking person? Christopher and I are the only white people I have seen in Xining with the exception of a family at the train station, even in the places you'd most expect tourists like the temples and the big market. Andrea and Brian, the Canadians who stayed at the hostel, were both of Chinese descent.
We didn't want to pay 80Y to get inside the buildings at the monastery (and see the famous yak butter sculptures), so instead we climbed around on the mountains surrounding the monastery. It made me feel really happy. I love mountains. I felt very fresh and awake in a way that I'd forgotten to feel. I also love how mountains make you feel very small, and very tall, at the same time. At the top there were lots of colorful prayer flags and also lots of paths going every which way. There was one going down the other side of the mountain and I really wanted to follow it but I wussed out before I got to the bottom because I saw people's feet wandering around beneath the trees and I thought maybe I would come out in somebody's backyard. So instead I went sideways (all the mountains are terraced, I think by the monks, so that trees can grow on them) and tried to find a place where I could see through the trees but instead I found a baby dragonfly and then I stepped in a giant anthill at which point I decided to go back to the path. On the mountain I also saw two types of flowers that I had never seen before, and some small kids playing tag next to a stone monument thing. I wanted to take a picture of them but I was afraid they'd notice. Christopher and I split up for an hour and I heard people making comments in Chinese like "She's here alone?"
The guy with the sketchy non-taxi came to the monastery when we were waiting for the bus at 7 pm, and he wanted to charge us 25Y. We told him no, we were waiting for the 5Y bus, so then he offered to take us for 6Y a piece, since he had to go back to Xining anyway. Christopher said no, 5Y, and I translated, and the non-taxi driver drove off by himself thereby losing 10Y. I think it would hurt his pride for him to lower his price all the way to ours without us raising ours at all. The bus didn't come, so I was nervous, but then we wandered down the street and found another minibus also for 5Y and got on. The people got us to sit on a carpeted bench at the front, and we talked in choppy Mandarin. The people we met were also tourists, from Urumqi, which is in Xinjiang, China's western-most, mostly Muslim, province (Qinghai is second western-most so there are also a lot of Muslims here). They had a strong accent and I don't understand spoken Chinese very well so it took us a while to communicate. The man in the front told Christopher that he wanted to be his pengyou (friend) and the ladies I was sitting next to felt my braid and my arm - my pale skin was even more interesting to them than my blond hair, and they exclaimed over it at length. I think one of them wanted to know if I dyed my hair. One of them had her teenage son there and she kept holding out my arm and pointing at my skin and then trying to get him to talk to me. He spoke a little English because he is in school right now. She and I took pictures together.
The bus ride was exciting because driving in China is very different. Our driver passed every single vehicle on the road, one by one. His method of passing was to change to the other side of the road, no matter what vehicles were there, and then honk his horn until they slowed down or stopped to let him by. In response, they would flash their lights which in China means "I am going to run into you." In spite of all this I have not seen a single traffic accident in China, probably because people drive more slowly because the roads are so busy. At one intersection (no light or stop sign - which I don't think exists in China) a tiny truck in the left lane pulled right in front of us to do a right turn. As well as passing and crazy turns and potholes and people doing U-turns when and wherever they feel like, pedestrians and people with fruit carts or bicycles just wander out into the road and hang out. The result is reminiscent of that car ad on TV where the guy's standing in the middle of an intersection in a desert and then four cars speed past him on all sides at the same time. The buses also frequently drive with the door open and people sometimes jump on while they're moving. I think the minibus is a private enterprise so the whole first half of the ride they've got someone leaning their head out the window shouting the bus's destination and occasionally a person will flag the bus down.
After the bus ride our pengyou asked us to have dinner with him and his family (the Urumqi crowd). We went into the restaurant next to their hotel and they brought out a bag full of chicken while we were waiting for other food to come. I didn't want to offend them so I took the smallest piece I could find. I realized that chicken isn't actually that tasty (although the spices that you could pinch and sprinkle on it were really good) so I don't miss it. Then the mom put another, bigger piece on my plate and so I ate it. I didn't feel guilty but I'm not going to eat chicken again unless identical circumstances happen. Then there was more food - tofu and noodles and bitter fruit, which is delicious but has a strong bitter aftertaste and I've never seen it in the US. I'd like to find some at a Chinese market and cook it once I get back to MIT. They asked if we liked rice so I told them about how we've been eating a lot of rice and noodles because those are the two food words I know how to say, so they taught us to say "Hongshou doufu" (a red, spicy tofu dish) and "Ku gua" (bitter fruit) and "Ya qian" (toothpick), which is a very useful bit of vocabulary. I want to find kugua at a Chinese market in the US and cook it because it's not something I'd ever had in the US so I can impress everybody with my foreign travels. I told them "Xie xie" a lot and we said goodbye, and then we saw the Chinese gangsters whom Christopher said were not gangsters but I think his definition of gangster is more like mobster and mine is more like high school kid who joins a gang and then beats up on people the gang doesn't like. They were chasing another guy on a motorcycle and trying to beat him with sticks. One of them hopped into a cab to chase him. They waved their sticks at us because they wanted to scare the foreigners.
Thursday, 6/14: Yesterday and today we had breakfast at the hostel. They give us rice congee with raisins and gouji berries in it (very delicious) and fried eggs (which I gave to Christopher) and a bun (pretty bland but the only bread I've had in China) and today yummy cucumber thingies.
There are relatively few washing machines in China, and no dryers. We paid 5Y to use the do-it-yourself washing machine (which means that one part of the machine does the washing and the other part spins the clothes to get out as much water as possible, and you have to transfer the clothes in between) and then hung our clothes up to dry overnight. It's exciting because I watched the washing machine spin and soap my clothing. Last time I did laundry by hand.
Today we went to the market again to buy more gouji berries, which are like red raisins and you can put them in hot water or milk with breakfast and they swell up. This time we did some comparison shopping and got twice as many berries for the same price. Then we walked around and looked for a bank so that I could get more cash because I only have 7Y and so borrowed 120 from Christopher. I tried 3 different banks before I found an ATM where my debit card worked, so Christopher got bored and went home. I wandered around the market and then around this mall whose only entrance was a couple of doors inside the market. There were all sorts of interesting and different clothes. The most fun are the wedding dress shops, which also have these giant puffy sparkly colorful dresses (more flamboyant than prom dresses) and we can't figure out what people wear them for. We also saw a couple of sparkly traditional Dutch-looking outfits for children in one of these shops. I bought a popsicle, the kind that I saw the most Chinese people eating, and it tasted banana-flavored. Because it was such a hot, sunny day, almost half the ladies and girls wandering around had sun umbrellas to keep their skin pale. You can tell they're sun umbrellas because (a) they're open on a sunny day and (b) they involve glitter and gauze.
After the market, I took the bus home, and these four school girls sat down next to me. We talked in Chinese and I understood them much better than ordinary Chinese people because schoolchildren practice their diction so they didn't speak with an accent and also because they were 9 years old (I asked. They were 10 in chinese which means 9 in America) and so they weren't afraid of condescending to the foreigner by talking loud-ly-and-slow-ly. They said my skin (pifu) and my hair were pretty and I attempted to tell them about tanning in America and skin cancer but didn't know the words so I think I just confused them. Three of the girls got off at my stop, but one said she lived far away so she was on the bus with me for 15 minutes maybe and we talked. Her name was Zhu1 Ping2 (the numbers mean 1st tone - flat and high - and 2nd tone - rising). I love talking to people in Chinese and I think I'm getting better at it although my vocabulary is deplorable.
Chinese people are so nice! Charlie thinks they all hate him because he was in Japan before this and they all fussed over him and in Shanghai he pretty much got ignored because there's a lot of foreigners, and then on his second day in Shanghai a girl dropped her credit card and he tapped her on the shoulder and held it out to her and she slapped him and shouted "Bu!" (NO!) and then he shouted "Shi ni de!" (It's yours!) and she grabbed it and ran off. Plus he kind of enjoys thinking the Chinese people hate him because then he can be the obnoxious tourist, getting in people's faces and saying profane things to the people who try to sell you useless stuff and then they repeat it back without understanding what it means.
I can't believe I've only been in China for a week and a day. So much experience! And so much to do. I don't think I could ever get bored. When I've been here longer I'm going to send everyone postcards and buy gifts and work on my bargaining skills and go make friends with random people in the mall since they all stare at me anyway. This may not work as well in Xi'an and Chengdu and Guilin and Beijing because those are bigger cities and tourist destinations so I'm sure they have more white people there. That probably also means they have more English speakers, which is kinda sad because I've been getting to practice my Chinese a lot the past few days. I realized that even if I lived in Xining for a year, people would still stare at me in the street because there's a couple million people in the city and so'd I'd still be walking past new people every day. However, if I lived here for a year I'd learn better Chinese so I wouldn't feel like as much of a foreigner.
I bought knitting at the giant street market (turquoise, cream, and red-orange yarn) and so I have enough to do forever, plus I have chinese lessons on my mp3 player, plus I have a loonnng fantasy book that I'm only about 170 pages into (and I'm a slow reader), plus there are puppies to play with, plus I can go talk stilted Chinese with people and look at shops (which are very exciting and different) and check prices and then be disgusted (a 100Y bracelet? please.), plus I need to upload my pictures from my camera onto facebook, plus I can go eat something new and different, plus I can take the bus and look out the window, plus I can wander around on the mountains because they don't belong to anybody except I have to make sure that the Chinese government isn't using them for missile target practice because Christopher saw that once, plus I want to review the lessons from Chinese III and IV to make my vocabulary and character recognition better, plus I like to just sit and daydream. I'm a very busy girl!
The puppies are named Lala and Sasa (like Lhasa). La is a 1st tone, so when you say Lala, it sounds really sweet and googoo-ey. Sa is a fourth tone, so when you say Sasa it sounds mad. Poor little Sasa must think she does everything wrong!
Around 3 pm we went to Ta'er Monastery. The directions said to catch a minibus from a certain bus stop, and there weren't any minibuses there, but there was a guy with a car that was not a taxi trying to get us to give him 30Y (way overcharging) to take us to Ta'er Si (si means temple or monastery, not sure). We went to the other side of the street and showed the characters for Ta'er Si to a lady at the bus stop and she was super nice and walked us a few blocks to the place where the minibuses come. The minibus was 5Y a person which was much better (in Xining, people spend yuan about the way we spend dollars). The minibus ride was pretty long but we saw lots of stuff through the windows. I also talked to a guy, who was a senior in college, who said "Hello" to me (since everyone studies English in school, although most people forget it right away, everyone knows "Hello" and likes to say it to the white people, and we say "Ni hao" back to show them that we speak Chinese even though we don't really) who actually spoke some English - probably about as much English as I spoke Chinese, so I spoke Mandarin and he spoke English. He wanted to know how long I was in Xining and offered to teach me English and wanted to know where my hostel was. I told him "No thanks, I'm only here for 5 days" and "Wo xiangbuqilai" (I forget) because even though he seemed perfectly well-meaning it seems weird to tell a stranger where I am staying.
Once in the big market here someone shouted "Hello, I love you!" at us. Can you imagine someone in America shouting "Ni hao, wo ai ni!" at a Chinese-looking person? Christopher and I are the only white people I have seen in Xining with the exception of a family at the train station, even in the places you'd most expect tourists like the temples and the big market. Andrea and Brian, the Canadians who stayed at the hostel, were both of Chinese descent.
We didn't want to pay 80Y to get inside the buildings at the monastery (and see the famous yak butter sculptures), so instead we climbed around on the mountains surrounding the monastery. It made me feel really happy. I love mountains. I felt very fresh and awake in a way that I'd forgotten to feel. I also love how mountains make you feel very small, and very tall, at the same time. At the top there were lots of colorful prayer flags and also lots of paths going every which way. There was one going down the other side of the mountain and I really wanted to follow it but I wussed out before I got to the bottom because I saw people's feet wandering around beneath the trees and I thought maybe I would come out in somebody's backyard. So instead I went sideways (all the mountains are terraced, I think by the monks, so that trees can grow on them) and tried to find a place where I could see through the trees but instead I found a baby dragonfly and then I stepped in a giant anthill at which point I decided to go back to the path. On the mountain I also saw two types of flowers that I had never seen before, and some small kids playing tag next to a stone monument thing. I wanted to take a picture of them but I was afraid they'd notice. Christopher and I split up for an hour and I heard people making comments in Chinese like "She's here alone?"
The guy with the sketchy non-taxi came to the monastery when we were waiting for the bus at 7 pm, and he wanted to charge us 25Y. We told him no, we were waiting for the 5Y bus, so then he offered to take us for 6Y a piece, since he had to go back to Xining anyway. Christopher said no, 5Y, and I translated, and the non-taxi driver drove off by himself thereby losing 10Y. I think it would hurt his pride for him to lower his price all the way to ours without us raising ours at all. The bus didn't come, so I was nervous, but then we wandered down the street and found another minibus also for 5Y and got on. The people got us to sit on a carpeted bench at the front, and we talked in choppy Mandarin. The people we met were also tourists, from Urumqi, which is in Xinjiang, China's western-most, mostly Muslim, province (Qinghai is second western-most so there are also a lot of Muslims here). They had a strong accent and I don't understand spoken Chinese very well so it took us a while to communicate. The man in the front told Christopher that he wanted to be his pengyou (friend) and the ladies I was sitting next to felt my braid and my arm - my pale skin was even more interesting to them than my blond hair, and they exclaimed over it at length. I think one of them wanted to know if I dyed my hair. One of them had her teenage son there and she kept holding out my arm and pointing at my skin and then trying to get him to talk to me. He spoke a little English because he is in school right now. She and I took pictures together.
The bus ride was exciting because driving in China is very different. Our driver passed every single vehicle on the road, one by one. His method of passing was to change to the other side of the road, no matter what vehicles were there, and then honk his horn until they slowed down or stopped to let him by. In response, they would flash their lights which in China means "I am going to run into you." In spite of all this I have not seen a single traffic accident in China, probably because people drive more slowly because the roads are so busy. At one intersection (no light or stop sign - which I don't think exists in China) a tiny truck in the left lane pulled right in front of us to do a right turn. As well as passing and crazy turns and potholes and people doing U-turns when and wherever they feel like, pedestrians and people with fruit carts or bicycles just wander out into the road and hang out. The result is reminiscent of that car ad on TV where the guy's standing in the middle of an intersection in a desert and then four cars speed past him on all sides at the same time. The buses also frequently drive with the door open and people sometimes jump on while they're moving. I think the minibus is a private enterprise so the whole first half of the ride they've got someone leaning their head out the window shouting the bus's destination and occasionally a person will flag the bus down.
After the bus ride our pengyou asked us to have dinner with him and his family (the Urumqi crowd). We went into the restaurant next to their hotel and they brought out a bag full of chicken while we were waiting for other food to come. I didn't want to offend them so I took the smallest piece I could find. I realized that chicken isn't actually that tasty (although the spices that you could pinch and sprinkle on it were really good) so I don't miss it. Then the mom put another, bigger piece on my plate and so I ate it. I didn't feel guilty but I'm not going to eat chicken again unless identical circumstances happen. Then there was more food - tofu and noodles and bitter fruit, which is delicious but has a strong bitter aftertaste and I've never seen it in the US. I'd like to find some at a Chinese market and cook it once I get back to MIT. They asked if we liked rice so I told them about how we've been eating a lot of rice and noodles because those are the two food words I know how to say, so they taught us to say "Hongshou doufu" (a red, spicy tofu dish) and "Ku gua" (bitter fruit) and "Ya qian" (toothpick), which is a very useful bit of vocabulary. I want to find kugua at a Chinese market in the US and cook it because it's not something I'd ever had in the US so I can impress everybody with my foreign travels. I told them "Xie xie" a lot and we said goodbye, and then we saw the Chinese gangsters whom Christopher said were not gangsters but I think his definition of gangster is more like mobster and mine is more like high school kid who joins a gang and then beats up on people the gang doesn't like. They were chasing another guy on a motorcycle and trying to beat him with sticks. One of them hopped into a cab to chase him. They waved their sticks at us because they wanted to scare the foreigners.
Thursday, 6/14: Yesterday and today we had breakfast at the hostel. They give us rice congee with raisins and gouji berries in it (very delicious) and fried eggs (which I gave to Christopher) and a bun (pretty bland but the only bread I've had in China) and today yummy cucumber thingies.
There are relatively few washing machines in China, and no dryers. We paid 5Y to use the do-it-yourself washing machine (which means that one part of the machine does the washing and the other part spins the clothes to get out as much water as possible, and you have to transfer the clothes in between) and then hung our clothes up to dry overnight. It's exciting because I watched the washing machine spin and soap my clothing. Last time I did laundry by hand.
Today we went to the market again to buy more gouji berries, which are like red raisins and you can put them in hot water or milk with breakfast and they swell up. This time we did some comparison shopping and got twice as many berries for the same price. Then we walked around and looked for a bank so that I could get more cash because I only have 7Y and so borrowed 120 from Christopher. I tried 3 different banks before I found an ATM where my debit card worked, so Christopher got bored and went home. I wandered around the market and then around this mall whose only entrance was a couple of doors inside the market. There were all sorts of interesting and different clothes. The most fun are the wedding dress shops, which also have these giant puffy sparkly colorful dresses (more flamboyant than prom dresses) and we can't figure out what people wear them for. We also saw a couple of sparkly traditional Dutch-looking outfits for children in one of these shops. I bought a popsicle, the kind that I saw the most Chinese people eating, and it tasted banana-flavored. Because it was such a hot, sunny day, almost half the ladies and girls wandering around had sun umbrellas to keep their skin pale. You can tell they're sun umbrellas because (a) they're open on a sunny day and (b) they involve glitter and gauze.
After the market, I took the bus home, and these four school girls sat down next to me. We talked in Chinese and I understood them much better than ordinary Chinese people because schoolchildren practice their diction so they didn't speak with an accent and also because they were 9 years old (I asked. They were 10 in chinese which means 9 in America) and so they weren't afraid of condescending to the foreigner by talking loud-ly-and-slow-ly. They said my skin (pifu) and my hair were pretty and I attempted to tell them about tanning in America and skin cancer but didn't know the words so I think I just confused them. Three of the girls got off at my stop, but one said she lived far away so she was on the bus with me for 15 minutes maybe and we talked. Her name was Zhu1 Ping2 (the numbers mean 1st tone - flat and high - and 2nd tone - rising). I love talking to people in Chinese and I think I'm getting better at it although my vocabulary is deplorable.
Chinese people are so nice! Charlie thinks they all hate him because he was in Japan before this and they all fussed over him and in Shanghai he pretty much got ignored because there's a lot of foreigners, and then on his second day in Shanghai a girl dropped her credit card and he tapped her on the shoulder and held it out to her and she slapped him and shouted "Bu!" (NO!) and then he shouted "Shi ni de!" (It's yours!) and she grabbed it and ran off. Plus he kind of enjoys thinking the Chinese people hate him because then he can be the obnoxious tourist, getting in people's faces and saying profane things to the people who try to sell you useless stuff and then they repeat it back without understanding what it means.
I can't believe I've only been in China for a week and a day. So much experience! And so much to do. I don't think I could ever get bored. When I've been here longer I'm going to send everyone postcards and buy gifts and work on my bargaining skills and go make friends with random people in the mall since they all stare at me anyway. This may not work as well in Xi'an and Chengdu and Guilin and Beijing because those are bigger cities and tourist destinations so I'm sure they have more white people there. That probably also means they have more English speakers, which is kinda sad because I've been getting to practice my Chinese a lot the past few days. I realized that even if I lived in Xining for a year, people would still stare at me in the street because there's a couple million people in the city and so'd I'd still be walking past new people every day. However, if I lived here for a year I'd learn better Chinese so I wouldn't feel like as much of a foreigner.
The story so far...
Word of the day: fu2 wu4 yuan2 (服务员) = waiter
I can post in this blog, but not look at it. How difficult....
So far:
-Last Wednesday, 6/6, arrived in Shanghai. Got ripped off by taxi, paid 168 yuan for half hour drive to Maggie International Youth Hostel. Met up with Charlie and later Forrest, met Christopher. Christopher came to China with a Daoist tour group and after that just went to Shanghai on his own to look for jobs, but then he decided not to stay in China and just keep touring for a few more weeks. He met Charlie at the hostel on Monday and we all made friends. Travelers have a marvelous sort of fraternity that is not just between Americans - I think I understand why the international students at MIT often stick together even if they're from different countries. Waited at bank to exchange traveler's checks for more than an hour. The girl behind the counter had a money-counting machine and casually picked up a stack of $100 bills and counted 100 of them. Suddenly I understand why people rob banks. In the bank they were showing TV ads. In one, a Chinese girl has a pimple and then a hot guy walks past her and stares at her. Then she washes her face with anti-acne cream, and then her features come out looking whiter, and then the guy walks past her and smiles. That evening, we went to the Bund, and asked a middle-aged white guy to take pictures of us. He took us out for beers (and a strawberry smoothie for me) at an expensive rooftop restaurant with a nice view of Shanghai. Whenever I try to ask people what to see in Shanghai, all they tell me is "the skyline." Shanghai buildings are much prettier and more creative than American buildings. Shanghai Pudong, which has the greatest concentration of fancy buildings, was all built in about 8 years. The tallest building in Shanghai is being built right now so currently the tallest structure is Shanghai is a crane. Shanghai is kind of like Manhattan except the extremely fancy buildings that you find in a few blocks in New York are spread out all over the city. I am impressed by how cheap everything is because of the 7:1 exchange rate but later realize that Shanghai is quite expensive.
-Thursday, 6/7: I take a whole bunch of pictures. See facebook to find out what I did. I eat green tea cheesecake at Starbucks even though I don't like green tea (which I am afraid to admit in China) because there is no green tea cheesecake in America. We met other tourists in the city center who said they were Korean but actually they were Chinese and their grandparents were Korean or something like that. We ordered spicy green beans because of me and Charlie and I made the mistake of eating all the dried red peppers in it which are a lot more potent in China than in America. I had to stop halfway through because I felt like I had a hole in my tongue and felt embarrassed because apparently I was making pained faces and looked like I was going to faint and everyone fussed over me. The guy across from me scoffed his in about a minute.
-Friday, 6/8: Delicious breakfast for 2 kuai. It's a soft tofu skin wrapped like a burrito around veggies and crispy tofu skins and delicious sauce on the inside. I want to try and make something like it when I get back to America. We went to try and buy permits to go to Tibet at 500Y per person. They insisted on also making us pay for a guide for 200Y per day while we are in Tibet and a car to pick us up from the train station at 5Y per kilometer for an absurd total of 4250Y between the four of us. When Christopher and I got to Xining, we found out we had been ripped off. This whole process took us hours and the only concession we got was that they didn't make us pay for a Jeep for 100Y a day while we were there. For dinner, we ate at a fancy restaurant and it cost about 50Y a person but it was a relief to have food that wasn't fried. Then we went looking for clubs (we kept asking people for a "disco") and we wandered into this one place where no one was dancing except for these girls on tables who were like strippers who didn't take their clothes off. Charlie and Forrest and Christopher kept trying to get a crowd of people dancing, but the most we got was a couple of the waitresses. All the Chinese people were super fashionably dressed and sat around and drank and watched the dancing girls and fancy flashing lights and listened to the pulsing loud music and smoked and played dice. I felt like the flashing lights (they had cool green lasers where you could see the lines in the air, although maybe that was because of all the smoke) and loud loud music were kind of annoying if you weren't going to dance. When we left, we met a middle-aged guy who was one of the owners of the club and he directed us to a "disco bar" which was mostly foreigners but where everyone danced and they had a sign inviting people to dance on the bar, instead of having non-strippers doing so. Charlie disappeared and the other three of us looked for him for 45 minutes before deciding to ditch him and go back to the hostel, where we found him talking to Yi Lifang, the pretty girl who works behind the desk at night. Anton, who works there during the day and is maybe the owner, is super nice and speaks English fluently and does everything he can to help us.
-Saturday, 6/9: Christopher and I want to go ahead to Xining in Qinghai province instead of waiting the 5 days for the permits to be issued, while Charlie and Forrest want to see more things around Shanghai. I want to get out of Shanghai because the air pollution is so bad and things are pretty expensive. I also decide it would be cool to see somewhere more rural and western like Xining (Shanghai has a lot in common with America) so I decide to go to Xining with someone I've known for three days. Christopher and I buy train tickets to Xining for Sunday morning and Charlie and Forrest leave the hostel to go visit some town near Shanghai. Christopher and I buy lychees which are delicious and sticky and called lizhi in Chinese.
-Sunday, 6/10: Christopher and I leave the hostel at 7:30 am to get to the train station for our 9 am train (a 30.5 hour ride). I accidentally leave my delicious 2Y breakfast burrito in the cab and feel very sad. Our "hard bunks" (ying wo) are actually quite soft and come with a mattress and a pillow and a quilt. The 30 hour train ride was pretty nice. Christopher and I had bottom bunks (there's bottom, middle, and top) so we could stow our stuff on the floor and use the little table and get up really easily. Also the bottom bunks have enough head room to sit up straight. The train ticket was about 450Y, or about $65. I slept a lot on the train, and listened to music and Chinese lessons on my mp3 player, which has an inexhaustible battery life, and ate and talked to people and daydreamed, and read a depressing fantasy book where people keep dying and so many people do really bad things like drop kiddies out of windows just because they eavesdropped. I am now a master of going to the bathroom by squatting over a hole in the floor (on the train, you could see daylight coming up the hole so I think it went straight onto the tracks, which is why they locked the bathrooms at all the stops). On the train, in the two bunks above us there were these two young Chinese people, Xiao Kang and Xiaofeng. Xiao Kang is 21 and studying in Shanghai. Xiaofeng is 27 and has a cleaning job I think. He's from Shanghai, but Xiao Kang is from Henan. They met in Shanghai because they live in the same apartment complex I think, and they were traveling to Henan so that Xiao Kang could visit her parents and they were also visiting Saolinshan, which is a mountain where people do lots of wushu (we managed to figure all of this out using my botched Chinese). They gave us their addresses and phone numbers. They were only on the train for the first 11 hours, but Christopher spent a lot of those 11 hours lying on his bunk looking up at Xiao Kang (who is quite pretty) with this big goofy smile. After they got off he sent her a text message which I had to write because he doesn't speak Chinese (it was cool using a phone to type in Chinese characters) and then she messaged him back, and they might meet up again later if he decides to stay in China. I will post pictures of Xiao Kang and Xiaofeng (who got a little bit ignored) later, when I find a high-speed internet connection.
Monday, 6/11: After our new friends got off, a very very loud chubby old man and his friend got on and took their bunks right above us. The old man took his shirt off, which was slightly distressing because he was fat and old and he lay there under his blanket and stared at us because we were foreigners. He talked really really loudly in a constant stream to his friend who said a few words every 20 minutes or so. Christopher thought he was on his cell phone but he wasn't. He got on in the middle of the night. There were also two adorable small children who occasionally screamed but on the whole they were more adorable than annoying. The little girl danced with me when music came on the speakers. She must have been teething because she tried to eat absolutely everything, including my toes. I woke up in the middle of the night because the little boy pulled on my feet.
Our hostel in Xining is cool. It's 35Y a night. It has a very Tibetan look. Right now I am sitting 3 feet away from a ram's skull with a big yellow ribbon on it. They have two golden retriever puppies which they keep in a little pink cage and let them out to eat noodles and tofu and run around biting the bottom of your pants. They also peed in someone's room in the morning. Yesterday after getting to Xining we first tried to buy a ticket to Lhasa at the train station, with no luck. The first available ticket was for the 18th, but we need to get on the same train as Charlie and Forrest on the 15th, because back in Shanghai when we paid for our permits to go to Lhasa they also made us pay for a guide for certain days so we don't want to get there later. Plus Charlie and Forrest are bringing our permits on that train. In Xining it is very hard to buy tickets to Lhasa, which legitimately can only be purchased at the train station, because people buy the tickets way ahead of time and then resell them on the black market for twice the cost. Even though stuff is really cheap here (meals <= 5Y), money can go really fast. Mercifully, it goes a lot less fast than in Shanghai, because Charlie and Forrest are not naturally pinch-fingered like I am and wanted to go to relatively expensive bars and things (plus everything in Shanghai, while cheaper than America, is much more expensive than Xining).
After being unable to buy tickets at the train station, we waited for someone from the hostel to pick us up. Christopher went to the bathroom and then all these middle-aged and old Chinese men converged around me from out of nowhere in this big circle. Even though the circle thing felt like a movie scene where the evil gang circles up around their next victim, I think they were just curious. They asked me questions in Chinese like where I was from and established that I could speak a little Chinese (my understanding of spoken Chinese is very poor). They said I was "piaoliang" (pretty) and I understood that, and then when Christopher came back they told him that I was piaoliang even though he doesn't speak a word of Chinese, because I think they thought he was my boyfriend.
After checking in at the hostel we took a bus (only 1Y) into town to eat. At the place we ate we met a Korean man who's an interior designer and has taken a one month vacation into China by himself, not knowing a word of Mandarin, to visit a lot of different places on the Silk Road.
Tuesday, 6/12: I slept until 10 am and then took until 11 am to get ready to go, so I felt bad because I think Christopher was up at 8 or 9. We went to Beichan Temple, which is a Daoist temple on the side of a mountain. I've only been gone from MacGregor 4th floor for about three weeks and already I got very out of breath going up the stairs on the side of the mountain. Mountains here are different from East Coast American mountains. They have sparse, desert-like vegetation and are very steep and muddy. At the Daoist temple they made tons of narrow terraces on the side of the mountain so that they could grow small trees and rose bushes. There were temples for lots of different gods at Beichan. I was very excited because one of them was for Chenghuang, which means the city god, and I recognized the characters because we read a story in which a river ghost saved a mother from drowning even though she was supposed to replace him as the river ghost so that he could become human again, and so he got promoted to be a chenghuang.
On the way to Beichan I bought a tea thermos for 11Y. It's very exciting. It comes with a screen you put near the top so that the tea leaves don't get in your mouth. A ton of people in China have them. I will use it at MIT too. Good purchase.
After the temple we wandered around and found this market that stretched for blocks and blocks and blocks in multiple directions, just plopped down in the middle of the city in between apartment buildings and things. We ate noodles for lunch at a stall there (3Y each) and bought a scallion pancake for 5 mao, or half a yuan (they're so delicious fresh!). Then we wandered into a fancy-looking mall where things cost hundreds or thousands of yuan, and everything had an English name brand except they weren't real. There was "G&P, Guardian Penguin, UK style," whose mascot was a penguin in a royal guard outfit (this was my favorite but the cheapest thing they had was socks for 22Y). There were brands like "Gandidoni" and "Masticot of Paris" and "Chrisdien Deon from Italy" and all these others. I wonder if the Chinese people shopping there knew that these brands aren't really from the Western hemisphere.
The schoolchildren all wear uniforms. Christopher doesn't like it because it's a symbol of trying to force everyone to be uniform, but I think they're cute.
We met up with a Canadian girl who's staying at the hostel, Andrea, on the street in the middle of the city. We ate dinner together (4Y a piece) and wandered around. We bought tasty strawberry ice cream floats at KFC, which is more expensive than other food here (9Y for one float).
I had my first thief today. Only he was a bad thief, so I caught him. He came up behind me and tried to open my camera bag (which also has my money in it) but the seal is velcro so the bag lifted up and the velcro made a noise and I turned around and swatted his hand and said "Ni zuo shenme?" which means "What are you doing?" and then in Chinese he was all "I don't know what you're talking about" in Chinese and backed into Christopher, but luckily didn't steal anything from his Mexican man-purse and said to Christopher "Ta hui shuo Zhongwen" (she can speak Chinese) kind of trying to brush it off and then he walked away really quickly. Afterwards I felt like I should've gotten much madder at him and balled him out but the only things I can say in Chinese when I'm angry are "thief!" and "you're a bad person" and "your mother is not proud of you" which is kind of funny and probably would have made him laugh. Andrea, whose parents are from Shanghai and who speaks Cantonese but only a little more Mandarin than I do, reassured me that I probably scared him because I was talking so slowly like I was really mad: "Ni. Zuo. Shenme?" but that's just because I'm not very good at Chinese so I always speak really slowly. It was exciting, all in all, especially because he didn't get anything.
I can post in this blog, but not look at it. How difficult....
So far:
-Last Wednesday, 6/6, arrived in Shanghai. Got ripped off by taxi, paid 168 yuan for half hour drive to Maggie International Youth Hostel. Met up with Charlie and later Forrest, met Christopher. Christopher came to China with a Daoist tour group and after that just went to Shanghai on his own to look for jobs, but then he decided not to stay in China and just keep touring for a few more weeks. He met Charlie at the hostel on Monday and we all made friends. Travelers have a marvelous sort of fraternity that is not just between Americans - I think I understand why the international students at MIT often stick together even if they're from different countries. Waited at bank to exchange traveler's checks for more than an hour. The girl behind the counter had a money-counting machine and casually picked up a stack of $100 bills and counted 100 of them. Suddenly I understand why people rob banks. In the bank they were showing TV ads. In one, a Chinese girl has a pimple and then a hot guy walks past her and stares at her. Then she washes her face with anti-acne cream, and then her features come out looking whiter, and then the guy walks past her and smiles. That evening, we went to the Bund, and asked a middle-aged white guy to take pictures of us. He took us out for beers (and a strawberry smoothie for me) at an expensive rooftop restaurant with a nice view of Shanghai. Whenever I try to ask people what to see in Shanghai, all they tell me is "the skyline." Shanghai buildings are much prettier and more creative than American buildings. Shanghai Pudong, which has the greatest concentration of fancy buildings, was all built in about 8 years. The tallest building in Shanghai is being built right now so currently the tallest structure is Shanghai is a crane. Shanghai is kind of like Manhattan except the extremely fancy buildings that you find in a few blocks in New York are spread out all over the city. I am impressed by how cheap everything is because of the 7:1 exchange rate but later realize that Shanghai is quite expensive.
-Thursday, 6/7: I take a whole bunch of pictures. See facebook to find out what I did. I eat green tea cheesecake at Starbucks even though I don't like green tea (which I am afraid to admit in China) because there is no green tea cheesecake in America. We met other tourists in the city center who said they were Korean but actually they were Chinese and their grandparents were Korean or something like that. We ordered spicy green beans because of me and Charlie and I made the mistake of eating all the dried red peppers in it which are a lot more potent in China than in America. I had to stop halfway through because I felt like I had a hole in my tongue and felt embarrassed because apparently I was making pained faces and looked like I was going to faint and everyone fussed over me. The guy across from me scoffed his in about a minute.
-Friday, 6/8: Delicious breakfast for 2 kuai. It's a soft tofu skin wrapped like a burrito around veggies and crispy tofu skins and delicious sauce on the inside. I want to try and make something like it when I get back to America. We went to try and buy permits to go to Tibet at 500Y per person. They insisted on also making us pay for a guide for 200Y per day while we are in Tibet and a car to pick us up from the train station at 5Y per kilometer for an absurd total of 4250Y between the four of us. When Christopher and I got to Xining, we found out we had been ripped off. This whole process took us hours and the only concession we got was that they didn't make us pay for a Jeep for 100Y a day while we were there. For dinner, we ate at a fancy restaurant and it cost about 50Y a person but it was a relief to have food that wasn't fried. Then we went looking for clubs (we kept asking people for a "disco") and we wandered into this one place where no one was dancing except for these girls on tables who were like strippers who didn't take their clothes off. Charlie and Forrest and Christopher kept trying to get a crowd of people dancing, but the most we got was a couple of the waitresses. All the Chinese people were super fashionably dressed and sat around and drank and watched the dancing girls and fancy flashing lights and listened to the pulsing loud music and smoked and played dice. I felt like the flashing lights (they had cool green lasers where you could see the lines in the air, although maybe that was because of all the smoke) and loud loud music were kind of annoying if you weren't going to dance. When we left, we met a middle-aged guy who was one of the owners of the club and he directed us to a "disco bar" which was mostly foreigners but where everyone danced and they had a sign inviting people to dance on the bar, instead of having non-strippers doing so. Charlie disappeared and the other three of us looked for him for 45 minutes before deciding to ditch him and go back to the hostel, where we found him talking to Yi Lifang, the pretty girl who works behind the desk at night. Anton, who works there during the day and is maybe the owner, is super nice and speaks English fluently and does everything he can to help us.
-Saturday, 6/9: Christopher and I want to go ahead to Xining in Qinghai province instead of waiting the 5 days for the permits to be issued, while Charlie and Forrest want to see more things around Shanghai. I want to get out of Shanghai because the air pollution is so bad and things are pretty expensive. I also decide it would be cool to see somewhere more rural and western like Xining (Shanghai has a lot in common with America) so I decide to go to Xining with someone I've known for three days. Christopher and I buy train tickets to Xining for Sunday morning and Charlie and Forrest leave the hostel to go visit some town near Shanghai. Christopher and I buy lychees which are delicious and sticky and called lizhi in Chinese.
-Sunday, 6/10: Christopher and I leave the hostel at 7:30 am to get to the train station for our 9 am train (a 30.5 hour ride). I accidentally leave my delicious 2Y breakfast burrito in the cab and feel very sad. Our "hard bunks" (ying wo) are actually quite soft and come with a mattress and a pillow and a quilt. The 30 hour train ride was pretty nice. Christopher and I had bottom bunks (there's bottom, middle, and top) so we could stow our stuff on the floor and use the little table and get up really easily. Also the bottom bunks have enough head room to sit up straight. The train ticket was about 450Y, or about $65. I slept a lot on the train, and listened to music and Chinese lessons on my mp3 player, which has an inexhaustible battery life, and ate and talked to people and daydreamed, and read a depressing fantasy book where people keep dying and so many people do really bad things like drop kiddies out of windows just because they eavesdropped. I am now a master of going to the bathroom by squatting over a hole in the floor (on the train, you could see daylight coming up the hole so I think it went straight onto the tracks, which is why they locked the bathrooms at all the stops). On the train, in the two bunks above us there were these two young Chinese people, Xiao Kang and Xiaofeng. Xiao Kang is 21 and studying in Shanghai. Xiaofeng is 27 and has a cleaning job I think. He's from Shanghai, but Xiao Kang is from Henan. They met in Shanghai because they live in the same apartment complex I think, and they were traveling to Henan so that Xiao Kang could visit her parents and they were also visiting Saolinshan, which is a mountain where people do lots of wushu (we managed to figure all of this out using my botched Chinese). They gave us their addresses and phone numbers. They were only on the train for the first 11 hours, but Christopher spent a lot of those 11 hours lying on his bunk looking up at Xiao Kang (who is quite pretty) with this big goofy smile. After they got off he sent her a text message which I had to write because he doesn't speak Chinese (it was cool using a phone to type in Chinese characters) and then she messaged him back, and they might meet up again later if he decides to stay in China. I will post pictures of Xiao Kang and Xiaofeng (who got a little bit ignored) later, when I find a high-speed internet connection.
Monday, 6/11: After our new friends got off, a very very loud chubby old man and his friend got on and took their bunks right above us. The old man took his shirt off, which was slightly distressing because he was fat and old and he lay there under his blanket and stared at us because we were foreigners. He talked really really loudly in a constant stream to his friend who said a few words every 20 minutes or so. Christopher thought he was on his cell phone but he wasn't. He got on in the middle of the night. There were also two adorable small children who occasionally screamed but on the whole they were more adorable than annoying. The little girl danced with me when music came on the speakers. She must have been teething because she tried to eat absolutely everything, including my toes. I woke up in the middle of the night because the little boy pulled on my feet.
Our hostel in Xining is cool. It's 35Y a night. It has a very Tibetan look. Right now I am sitting 3 feet away from a ram's skull with a big yellow ribbon on it. They have two golden retriever puppies which they keep in a little pink cage and let them out to eat noodles and tofu and run around biting the bottom of your pants. They also peed in someone's room in the morning. Yesterday after getting to Xining we first tried to buy a ticket to Lhasa at the train station, with no luck. The first available ticket was for the 18th, but we need to get on the same train as Charlie and Forrest on the 15th, because back in Shanghai when we paid for our permits to go to Lhasa they also made us pay for a guide for certain days so we don't want to get there later. Plus Charlie and Forrest are bringing our permits on that train. In Xining it is very hard to buy tickets to Lhasa, which legitimately can only be purchased at the train station, because people buy the tickets way ahead of time and then resell them on the black market for twice the cost. Even though stuff is really cheap here (meals <= 5Y), money can go really fast. Mercifully, it goes a lot less fast than in Shanghai, because Charlie and Forrest are not naturally pinch-fingered like I am and wanted to go to relatively expensive bars and things (plus everything in Shanghai, while cheaper than America, is much more expensive than Xining).
After being unable to buy tickets at the train station, we waited for someone from the hostel to pick us up. Christopher went to the bathroom and then all these middle-aged and old Chinese men converged around me from out of nowhere in this big circle. Even though the circle thing felt like a movie scene where the evil gang circles up around their next victim, I think they were just curious. They asked me questions in Chinese like where I was from and established that I could speak a little Chinese (my understanding of spoken Chinese is very poor). They said I was "piaoliang" (pretty) and I understood that, and then when Christopher came back they told him that I was piaoliang even though he doesn't speak a word of Chinese, because I think they thought he was my boyfriend.
After checking in at the hostel we took a bus (only 1Y) into town to eat. At the place we ate we met a Korean man who's an interior designer and has taken a one month vacation into China by himself, not knowing a word of Mandarin, to visit a lot of different places on the Silk Road.
Tuesday, 6/12: I slept until 10 am and then took until 11 am to get ready to go, so I felt bad because I think Christopher was up at 8 or 9. We went to Beichan Temple, which is a Daoist temple on the side of a mountain. I've only been gone from MacGregor 4th floor for about three weeks and already I got very out of breath going up the stairs on the side of the mountain. Mountains here are different from East Coast American mountains. They have sparse, desert-like vegetation and are very steep and muddy. At the Daoist temple they made tons of narrow terraces on the side of the mountain so that they could grow small trees and rose bushes. There were temples for lots of different gods at Beichan. I was very excited because one of them was for Chenghuang, which means the city god, and I recognized the characters because we read a story in which a river ghost saved a mother from drowning even though she was supposed to replace him as the river ghost so that he could become human again, and so he got promoted to be a chenghuang.
On the way to Beichan I bought a tea thermos for 11Y. It's very exciting. It comes with a screen you put near the top so that the tea leaves don't get in your mouth. A ton of people in China have them. I will use it at MIT too. Good purchase.
After the temple we wandered around and found this market that stretched for blocks and blocks and blocks in multiple directions, just plopped down in the middle of the city in between apartment buildings and things. We ate noodles for lunch at a stall there (3Y each) and bought a scallion pancake for 5 mao, or half a yuan (they're so delicious fresh!). Then we wandered into a fancy-looking mall where things cost hundreds or thousands of yuan, and everything had an English name brand except they weren't real. There was "G&P, Guardian Penguin, UK style," whose mascot was a penguin in a royal guard outfit (this was my favorite but the cheapest thing they had was socks for 22Y). There were brands like "Gandidoni" and "Masticot of Paris" and "Chrisdien Deon from Italy" and all these others. I wonder if the Chinese people shopping there knew that these brands aren't really from the Western hemisphere.
The schoolchildren all wear uniforms. Christopher doesn't like it because it's a symbol of trying to force everyone to be uniform, but I think they're cute.
We met up with a Canadian girl who's staying at the hostel, Andrea, on the street in the middle of the city. We ate dinner together (4Y a piece) and wandered around. We bought tasty strawberry ice cream floats at KFC, which is more expensive than other food here (9Y for one float).
I had my first thief today. Only he was a bad thief, so I caught him. He came up behind me and tried to open my camera bag (which also has my money in it) but the seal is velcro so the bag lifted up and the velcro made a noise and I turned around and swatted his hand and said "Ni zuo shenme?" which means "What are you doing?" and then in Chinese he was all "I don't know what you're talking about" in Chinese and backed into Christopher, but luckily didn't steal anything from his Mexican man-purse and said to Christopher "Ta hui shuo Zhongwen" (she can speak Chinese) kind of trying to brush it off and then he walked away really quickly. Afterwards I felt like I should've gotten much madder at him and balled him out but the only things I can say in Chinese when I'm angry are "thief!" and "you're a bad person" and "your mother is not proud of you" which is kind of funny and probably would have made him laugh. Andrea, whose parents are from Shanghai and who speaks Cantonese but only a little more Mandarin than I do, reassured me that I probably scared him because I was talking so slowly like I was really mad: "Ni. Zuo. Shenme?" but that's just because I'm not very good at Chinese so I always speak really slowly. It was exciting, all in all, especially because he didn't get anything.
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